Hasta La Creative!

Pepsi has long presented itself as the hip, fashion-forward, culturally aware, live-for-the-moment alternative to its bigger, more classic rival Coca-Cola. Coke is timeless and Pepsi is timely, Pepsi global executive Brad Jakeman told Ad Age in 2012, summarizing months of research that led to the “Live For Now” campaign that Pepsi broke that year.

But now Pepsi is reeling from criticism that strikes at the heart of the brand image its marketers have carefully crafted, as a result of one single global ad that never even made it to TV in the U.S. The spot, as everyone knows by now, starred supermodel and reality TV star Kendall Jenner joining a nondescript peace/protest march. Pepsi pulled the ad Wednesday morning amid withering criticism that it co-opted protest movements such as Black Lives Matter for commercial gain.

Pepsi, a brand that has sought to create culture, is now being mocked as tone-deaf and culturally unaware. The biggest blow might have come from Bernice A. King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., who ripped the brand Wednesday with a sarcastic tweet stating “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi” — a reference to a scene in the ad in which Ms. Jenner hands a policeman a Pepsi, eliciting a smile from him and cheers from the protest marchers.

Continue reading at AdAge.com