Before it’s an ad for shampoo or cat food or cola, every advertisement is first an ad for capitalism.
Without a privately-controlled industry jockeying to compete with one another for consumer dollars, there’s no need for advertising. People would wash their hair with Shampoo, and feed their cats with Cat Food, and quench their thirst with Cola. Without competition, there would be no need to advertise in the first place. Especially when it comes to commodities. There are some differences between colas—the taste and the ingredients, for example. But the main difference is on the can rather than in it. The branding, and the sensibilities that branding conveys.
Yesterday, Pepsi released an ad that takes a strong, if bizarre, brand position on contemporary politics. Inthe spot, dubbed “Jump In,” Kendall Jenner abandons a photo shoot to join a passing march. To do so, she sheds a blonde wig and slips in among a diverse throng of variously-toned participants in a seemingly-innocuous protest. Eventually, Jenner meets an equally innocuous policeman keeping order. She hands him a cold Pepsi, and the crowd of protesters rejoices. “Live for Now,” the spot concludes, topped by the Pepsi brand mark.
The ad has been almost universally panned online. Atone-deaftake on “protest as brunch.” Anabsurdist parodyof the long, unfinished project of civil-rights activism in America. Atrivializationof today’s street unrest.
All these criticisms are dead-on. But they don’t matter, because the ad is an undeniable success. Yes, true, it coopts the politics of protest, particularly as they surround race relations in America today. But that’s not the ad’s goal, so the public’s objection is ultimately irrelevant to Pepsi’s mission. The ad’s point is to put the consumer in a more important role than the citizen anyway. And to position Pepsi as a facilitator in the utopian dream of pure, color-blind consumerism that might someday replace politics entirely.
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Controversy is no stranger to consumer marketing today. In early 2016, Coca-Cola launched an online ad campaign that let users overlay their own taglines onto GIFs of people enjoying the company’s soft drinks. Aware of the dangers of user-generated content, Coke built a many-thousand-entry “profanity API” to prevent objectionable ads.Writing about the campaignlast year, I cataloged the various concepts Coke knew it didn’t want people to associate with its brand. Those included vulgarity, drugs, and other brand names—but also weirder things, like references to science, music, and even tacos.
But it still couldn’t stop people from making Coke GIFs that mocked the company directly. For a time, social media swelled with user-generatedsneersat Coke, fashioned by means of the very tool that was meant to prop the brand up. Take that, capitalism! Hoisted on its own petard.
The only problem: Capitalism is an immensely resilient institution. The ironic, contra-Coke GIFs couldn’t help but become transformed back into brand-compatible Coca-Cola messaging. Even the neo-Marxist agitators fashioning Coke-facilitated critiques of consumer capitalism might occasionally drink soft drinks. And when they do, their brains will have to contend with the dissonance of feeling affinity for Coca-Cola, thanks to the company having facilitated sneers at its own expense.
It’s possible to understand the Pepsi protest as a march for the power of Pepsi branding instead of social justice.
The Pepsi “Jump In” ad plays a similar trump card. In astatement, the company claims that the spot “captures the spirit and actions of those people that jump into every moment.” In so doing, according to Pepsi anyway, the brand unites people from different backgrounds around the shared delight of refreshment. For those predisposed to an apolitical reading of consumer advertising—and let’s face it, that’s most people—the result might land near its target, even if it doesn’t do so with the memorable aplomb of, say,Coca-Cola’s famous 1971 “Hilltop” ad.
But those who object to the ad’s brazen appropriation of political malcontent in general and organized protest in particular also have a role to play in Pepsi’s proposal for brand unity. The march shown in the ad is so nondescript as to invite offense. The supposed protesters carry generic signs: Peace, many read, or Unity. Another sign reads, “Join the Conversation,” a glib quip often used by media companies and brand marketers to spur engagement on social media or website comment sections. Here too, Pepsi wins in advance. For what else are the rightfully-angry critics of “Jump In” doing but “joining the conversation?” That call is clearly being met by everyone yammering against it on social media. To embrace all voices and perspectives isn’t a bad bet for a commodity soft-drink manufacturer.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/pepsi-ad-success/522021/
additional reading: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/05/pepsi-backlash-raises-bigger-question-about-companys-marketing-direction.html
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