Alex Cooke wrote a post last week about Pepsi's fiasco of a TV commercial. The ad seemed to offend the majority of people who watched it, causing Pepsi to quickly pull it. On Saturday SNL did their own skit on what they believe it was like on set seconds before they were ready to film.
If you haven't already seen the original commercial, you should check that out first. It shows some sort of protest that resembles a Black Lives Matter event, with a range of other ethnicities. Kendall Jenner, whom I had never heard of until this commercial, is in the middle of some sort of fashion photoshoot and she decides to leave to join the protest with a Pepsi in hand. She then pushes through the crowd to give a stern looking officer the drink and the crowd for some reason becomes happy as he takes a sip.
https://youtu.be/dA5Yq1DLSmQ
Many people are claiming this commercial is racist for using certain ethnicities in stereotypical ways or for using something as serious as today's political climate to sell a drink. I'm personally not offended by any of that, I'm offended at the ridiculous concept. Many commercials are stupid but this one is particularly dumb and after watching it I couldn't stop thinking about the person or group of people who approved this. I also kept wondering what the director was thinking. I guess SNL was also wondering that exact same thing because on Saturday they created a humorous, and somewhat sad, skit about the director second guessing his concept moments before filming.
During the skit I did laugh, but at the same time I cringed because I know this actually did happen to a real person. Maybe it didn't happen seconds before filming, but it certainly happened the second they released it to the public.
https://media.giphy.com/media/l4FGsGN3fzFjfRIDS/giphy.gif
I don't get it. The messages appear to be unrelated to each other or the issue. Of course, I am an old white guy. :-/
Maybe MAD Magazine has an online version? ;-)
I personally dont see the whole fuss about it, but that might be due to living in europe.
This commercial is light, and showing pepsi uniting people. Yes its basic, its not witty. it uses protest walks concept, in a tense climate in the us... what best to spark a conversation worldwide ?
The guys at pepsi must have a brilliant coms manager.
The point is... it totally worked. They are getting long lasting, worldwide, free, global, gender and race free sharing of their ad on blogs, newspapers, media, video channels and most certainly quite a few tv shows to discuss how bad it is... now that advertising speaking and buzz talking is genius.
The ad is like the gift that keeps on giving, with views being repeatedly promoted in places like Fstoppers to people who would never have seen it otherwise. I seriously wonder if Pepsi have spent as much on publicity to fuel the outrage as they did to produce the commercial in the first place.
And your description of the ad sums up my feelings about it also.
What stood out to me was the relatively huge budget that would have been required to produce the short SNL skit, for what was essentially a monologue of a guy talking on his phone.
SNL also geoblocks their content. How refreshingly retro.
Great! Now I've wasted my time watching this stupid Pepsi ad anticipating the SNL movie and then.... "The uploader has not made this video available in your country."
Now THAT is racist.