Original Ad: 

The ad that I chose is from Pepsi’s live for now campaign.  The ad have received so much criticism upon aring that it has now been discontinued, and Pepsi even offered an apology to Kendall Jenner which the ad stars. The ad showed Kendall Jenner leading a group of “protesters” with a can of pepsi in her hand. In a time where the world is so divided. between the left and the right, Pepsi managed to produce this content that without a doubt uniting both groups into seeing the absurdity of it’s message. Pepsi is a company that sells a Cola drink that contain 41 grams of sugar per can. Everyone understands that softdrinks like Pepsi are very unhealthy for us but we drink it because for many of us, the short term thirst quenching taste of “taking a sip” of pepsi, is worth any long term damage it may cause. In the ad, Pepsi utilized a multi culturalist  approach, a careful scan of the protestors in the picture would show races ranging from East Asians to South Asians to Africans to Caucasians, and in the center of the picture stands Kendall Jenner, a woman who’s well known for her family’s mixed race roots. However the attempt at political correctness with the careful selection of each protesters’ race seem rather counter productive as the transparency look disingenuous. At a time where sensitive issues that people are actually passionate about and stand up for such as protesting, women’s rights, diversity, and police brutality, Pepsi blatantly sees these forms of activism as marketing opportunities for their product. Pepsi subsequently risked it’s long term health by “taking a sip” of commercializing  these forms of activism, however, Pepsi have now  become part of the problem.

Jammed version

I’ve taken the liberty to help Pepsi create a new campaign that is even more transparent than their past attempts. Because in the original advert, Pepsi wanted to give a sense of politically correct multi racial feel, I’ve first changed the theme of the advert to black and white and the  effect gives the image an overall grey appearance thus, the advert is now not going overboard, rather it’s residing in a grey area. The most important aspect of the black and white is that although some may see this symbolize the segregation between black and whites, the true message is that now, without the help of paying extra actors, the theme of the world is now, literally, colourless and raceless, bringing us back to a simpler, more nostalgic time, where people drank Pepsi for the taste, and not to save the world. The original slogan of the piece read “Live Bolder”, however this could be interpreted many ways. In my parody, I added a second line to the original slogan, “Because tomorrow is uncertain”. With my new line, it initiates fear into the reader’s mind.  If we keep drinking all the pepsi and ingesting all the sugar into our body, than the chances of tomorrow becoming an uncertainty raises even higher, this is great as it could also act as a disclaimer to Pepsi inflicted health problems. With the beauty of the black and white, the pepsi can is now less visible thus if criticism arises, Pepsi could simply argue that this was a mere parody at how absurd it would be for a soda company to commercialize activism.