Recently Pepsi has released, and retracted an ad featuring Kendall Jenner that trivializes Black Lives Matter movement. The commercial shows a generic protest with filled with crowds of beautiful, young adults of all races. Kendall Jenner then joins the protest, and when the protesters come face to face with the police, she simply walks over and hands a policeman a Pepsi. The ground then cheers, and apparently whatever the crowd was protesting is resolved. The ad takes imagery shown from photos of protests from the Black Lives Matter protests, and add a good 'ole American Capitalistic twist to it to sell some merchandise. The ad was immediately criticized on twitter when it was released, resulting to many angry tweets, some funny late night talkshows, and a spoof on SNL. Pepsi made this statement to respond to the uproar: “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark and apologize,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday. “We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are pulling the content and halting any further rollout.”
I find it hard to believe that NOBODY had second thoughts when developing this add for Pepsi. And if there weren't any, Pepsi need to actually hire minorities to their development team to voice their opinions and experiences. This is a better alternative that simply hiring minorities for a commercial to project a facade that Pepsi is actually diverse. This isn't the first time that ads have been produced that have been culturally insensitive or ignorant. But ads like these won't stop being made until companies stop only hiring white men who think that they can speak for other people's experiences. Because when that happens, they get it wrong, as we all can see. Just a thought!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/business/kendall-jenner-pepsi-ad.html?_r=0
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