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I’m a very cynical guy when it comes to advertising. As soon as a “bad” advertisement comes out, my shit detector is up. What’s the point of an advertisement? To get people talking about your product. Especially in today’s media climate. Good, bad, whatever. As long as people are talking about your product, that’s a good thing. Any commercial that gets people to say “dude this commercial is the woooooorst” was made by a smart advertiser. 99% of the time, if an advertisement is eliciting emotion — especially negative emotion — I’m of the believe that it was done intentionally. 99% of the time.
And yeah, this is that. This is absolute that. This is absolutely intentional and it worked like a charm. I’m blogging about it. The internet is outraged. People are calling it “problematic”. The ad worked.
Everyone calling the ad “tone deaf”… you are who the target audience is and what the target reaction was.
Pepsi didn’t make this ad thinking “yes, we’ll inspire a diverse group of millennial to come together and be bold while drinking Pepsi!”
They made this ad thinking “how can we get the most vocal group — millennial — to complain online about how offensive this is without actually making an offensive ad?” and they did that. Shit, they could’ve done it all without Kendall Jenner. She was just the cherry on top.
“People don’t just get up and protest for no reason!” “Nobody plays cello on the roof of a building!” “A CAN OF PEPSI COULD NEVER SOLVE THE ISSUES WE’RE PROTESTING ABOUT!” “THIS IS SO PROBLEMATIC!”
Yeah, no shit guys. You think the people at Pepsi don’t know that? Thanks for the tweets and the shares.
You want less “tone deaf and problematic” ads? Stop being the most predictable consumers ever.
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