As you already might know (if you’re a loyal reader and you’re checking out everything we post), our topic for this week’s dsmmcm1819 content is failed campaigns. We went through Dove‘s campaign, Adidas‘ marathon and Walker‘s… interesting case of a campaign that wasn’t really thought through. It’s Friday (YAY!), so we decided to leave this BIG, special fail for today. You have heard about it and you’ve probably reacted in one way or another… So, here we go. The King of failed campaigns… Pepsi and Kendall Jenner.
Pepsi thought they could pull a nice, refreshing campaign showing they’re still as tasty as ever, picking the super famous (but questionably relatable to the average young person) model Kendall Jenner. In Pepsi‘s Marketing boss’ head probably the overall concept was fantastic. However, things turned out different once the campaign was out.
We are certain you’ve probably seen the advert more than twice at this point, however, for anyone who might have missed out, the scenario is: Kendall is in the middle of a photo shoot when she sees a massive protest outside the studio. Being the relatable and humble girl she is, she decides to ditch her professional engagement and show her support for the crowd outside. She joins them, grabbing a can of Pepsi and giving it to one of the police officers, who smiles as if he has seen Jesus himself. Birds are singing, the crowd cheers and everything is great. However, many people criticised the ad for exploiting the #BlackLivesMatter protests in America.
Pepsi released a statement, saying:
This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony. We think that’s an important message to convey.
Unfortunately for Pepsi, no one else agreed with them, so after a little bit more time, the company took down the campaign, apologised, and Kendall herself was forced to apologise in a video, crying while explaining that she didn’t know what exactly the advert was going to be and how things went horribly wrong.
Things ended with Independent calling it ”the worst commercial of all time” and things just kind of sunk. In conclusion, we sincerely hope that both Kendall and Pepsi will think twice before creating such content.
Well, as we said already, it’s Friday! We’re sure you enjoyed our weekly content of failed adverts, stay awesome and have a very relaxed weekend!
4 NTWRKS MCR #DSMMCM1819 