Ads for major companies play a very important role in their representation and marketing. The whole world is watching this 30-second production, creating many different opinions. Praise and criticism comes along with making these ads, especially when they stir up controversy. Recently, we’ve seen a Nike commercial including Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL football player who started the #Takeaknee movement during the national anthem. His intentions were to protest police brutality against black people occurring in the United States. This created a lot of backlash in the media, as stated in an Independent article. It also served as a reminder of the Pepsi ad involving Kendall Jenner that came out in April of 2017. This ad created a situation that undermined the Black Lives Matter movement without supposedly realizing its “racial tone-deafness”, as described in BBC and Huffington Post news stories. At the beginning of the ad model, Kendall Jenner is in the middle of a photo shoot when she notices a large crowd protesting outside. Everyone is holding signs displaying peace symbols and statements including: “join the conversation” and “love”. Kendall joins the protest. While grabbing a can of Pepsi she walks up to the front of the protest line to then hand it to a police officer. He drinks the pop and the crowd cheers, celebrating the “unity” between the two forces. This brought up many questions about Pepsi’s intentions for this ad as it began circulating in the media.
According to Stuart Hall in his article “Encoding, Decoding”, he believes that a message from factual events must be constructed in the production stage for it to be of value to the receivers. The message is interpreted by a single group and set in place,“ encoded”, at the beginning of the communication process and then broken down into different interpretations, “decoded”, at the end by the audience at which it’s received. In regards to the Pepsi ad, the “encoding” of the message for the protesting movement was to be “a global message of unity, peace, and understanding.” as Pepsi described in a tweet. When it reached different audiences around the world, it was “decoded” into a very different message. The overwhelming response consisted of criticism for “painting a privileged, white model as a peacemaker between civil rights activists and police.”, as BBC described it. A particular conversation during the “decoding” stage in Huffington Post article brought up that it looked like a replica of the trended Black Lives Matter photograph of Ieshia Evans in Baton Rouge in 2016. The Huffington Post article commented: “Unlike Jenner, however, Evans was arrested. If only she had a Pepsi in hand.” This analogy of the contribution of a Pepsi in historical black movements seemed to be a trend in discussions, including Bernice King’s (daughter of Martin Luther King) tweet: “If only daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi.”
The “decoding” of this controversial ad resulted in an overwhelming response of criticism and shock. The conversation lead to a large audience questioning the cultural diversity and ethics of the production team and the head of Pepsi itself. The public’s response formed a contrast in the original message that was “encoded” by Pepsi. One must ask, how did anyone perceive this insulting message as unifying? It raises the concern that Pepsi possibly made this ad to gain publicity from the controversy.
Citations:
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/kendall-jenner-appropriates-the-resistance-to-sell-you-pepsi_us_58e40c27e4b0d0b7e165bdec
Bernice King’s Tweet
https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/849656699464056832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E849656699464056832&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fobserver.com%2F2017%2F04%2Fkendall-jenner-pepsi-civil-rights%2F
Pictures
1. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/pepsi-advert-pulled-kendall-jenner-protest-video-cancelled-removed-a7668986.html
2. https://thinkingraceblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/that-pepsi-commercial/
3. https://www.pride.com/activism/2017/4/05/even-martin-luther-king-jrs-daughter-couldnt-believe-kendall-jenners-cringey-pepsi-ad
Other trended tweets involved in the discussion:
Phil Lewis
Scott Ludlam
https://twitter.com/Scottludlam/status/849404357485481984
Xavier Burgin