April (Eun Ah) Choi
Student Number: 47365168
1. The original ads: Pepsi commercial posts of 2013 Super Bowl half game show; Beyonce
2. Analysis
PepsiCo. is one of those companies that value gender equality. Indra Nooyi hired more females ever since she became CEO. When these ads were used, PepsiCo. got a lot of support using Beyonce who represents the success of Black women as a fighter when almost all Americans’ attentions were on the same thing, the Super Bowl. About a year ago, when Black Lives Matter movement was big, Kendall Jenner appeared on Pepsi’s new global commercial, and it became controversial since it seemed to suggest that the long histories of black people and other minority struggles can be stopped by a can of Pepsi. What I want to address here is that PepsiCo.’s selling the images of “ the popular representative celebrities ” does not convey any messages that they are representative or empowering on. Describing Beyonce who are representative of successful female, empowering women and general gender and race issues as a fighter and Kendall Jenner as a young white girl who stood for the protesters and asked the police officer for the end of protest was a good idea. However, the times when they released the ads with minimal understanding of what the actual messages these minority people taking from them was not so good. On the other hand, it was a good time to catch the majority’s attention but what they see is the celebrities but not the messages behind them as the representative figures.
3. Culture Jamming Ad
4. Explanation
I pondered about Pepsi’s use of models and the meaning of the models to the audience. Indeed, a popular celebrity attracts more attention and therefore, more sales occur. The Kendall Jenner issue made me think why it happened and I ended up with the idea that people can’t take the proper message that the ad tries to convey since there are the star and representative images on that model. Beyonce writes and talks about female rights, hopes in women, and empowering women and donates for women as a successful black female celebrity, which people barely think of.
I combined the two temporary ads due to being highly-edited and removed all texts. I wanted to show the contrast what people see and what people tend to ignore (e.g., Beyonce vs. what she represents such as female rights, domestic violence, immigrants). On the colourful ad, I covered the Eye Black with some pieces of information what Beyonce represents as a black female and wrote PepsiCo.’s general message. I adjusted the colour to brighter so that it can catch attention first and the most as conveying the message; this is always seen. The black and white one is the most significant piece of this work to represent most of the elements that Beyonce is representative is unseen or ignored. For example, all the sentences on it imply what all the minority groups go through in white, but it is not really seen to the majority. A lot of activists have been telling the world what these people go through, but it never get heard so they shout “LISTEN” and the mouth was removed, while the majority has been ignoring and saying “NOBODY LISTENS” to show the ignorance of the majority and the eyes were tearing due to the desperation. Some bruises on her face to show signs of domestic violence. I wanted to make people realize about what they pay attention to the most while the same thing is implying something more than what they pay attention to by asking “What caught your eyes more?” with Pepsi logos.
