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In April 2017, as polar ice sheets fractured and North Korea rattled its sabers, Pepsi's beleaguered "Live for Now" campaign enlisted reality star Kendall Jenner to depict a blithe vision of racial harmony between police and protestors in an ad.
The ad landed discordantly in a simmering United States still grappling with the deaths of Sterling and Castile at police hands the prior summer.
The resulting outcry at this profoundly tone-deaf trivialization forced the soda giant to retract the ad within a news cycle, dealing lasting damage to Pepsi's brand along the way.
As a campaign conceived in 2012, "Live for Now" was PepsiCo's attempt to capture the zeitgeist of Millennial optimism and social consciousness.
When the campaign was revived five years later in the spring of 2017, the sociopolitical landscape had shifted dramatically.
What may have resonated with young consumers in 2012 risked tone-deafness half a decade later.
Yet Pepsi's in-house creative team seemed not to grasp how protests over civil rights had evolved. Hence, they crafted an ad that appeared to trivialize the Black Lives Matter movement by depicting model Kendall Jenner abandoning a photoshoot to join a smiling, cheerful march.
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As protests over racial injustice roiled America in the mid-2010s, PepsiCo sought to produce an ad speaking to the tenor of the times.
Yet they bypassed external agencies, relying wholly on their in-house creative team, the "Creators League Studio," to render the concept.
This proved a fateful decision. Without wider perspectives to challenge inherent biases, the Creators League conceived an ad showcasing Kendall Jenner abandoning a photoshoot to join a smiling, cheerful protest march.
She even extends the gift of a Pepsi to a police officer in a harmonious conclusion.
Lost in this sparkling narrative was any consciousness of how perilous and frustrating actual protests could be.
The ad tanked upon release, widely condemned for co-opting civil rights demonstrations to sell soda. Pepsi quickly pulled the spot, but lasting damage was done.
The insularity of the Creators League had spawned an ad as politically deaf as it was tone deaf. Their in-house process resulted in Jenner appearing complicit in commercializing protests, sparking internet backlash though she lacked all agency in the ad's development.
Relying wholly on an internal creative team risked blind spots, especially regarding sensitive societal issues better judged from diverse vantage points.
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As tensions escalated in recent years between police and minority communities, demonstrations have filled America's streets protesting continued deadly violence.
Against this incendiary backdrop, Pepsi's ad opened with Kendall Jenner modeling at a photoshoot.
She then abandons the glamorous gig to join a smiling, cheerful protest march winding through the city.
As Jenner draws near police officers monitoring the march, she extends a symbolic olive branch—a Pepsi.
This concluding vignette purported to show how simple acts can heal divisions. Instead, it profoundly trivialized the agony fueling protests over police brutality that have erupted nationwide.
By suggesting Pepsi could bridge these profound rifts, the ad struck a chord so tone-deaf that condemnation was swift and fierce.
Rather than capturing the anguish of living under threat of police violence, Pepsi painted sanitized streets filled with happy marchers, reduced profound injustice to a commodity for purchase, and imagined soda could dissipate rage built by decades of brutality.
These painful truths reflected back in the ad's distorted mirror offended millions. Within a news cycle, Pepsi pulled the commercial while Jenner avoided culpability, having lacked creative input.
But lasting damage lingered.
The response to the ad's release has been described as "instant condemnation" of the PepsiCo brand. And rightly so.
By appropriating the imagery of protests over racial injustice while portraying the marchers as smiling, exuberant, and carefree, Pepsi struck a painfully discordant note in 2017 America.
This was a nation riven by tensions between minority communities and law enforcement, a wound reopened by graphic videos depicting the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police just the summer prior.
Against this incendiary backdrop, Pepsi's ad rang stunningly tone-deaf.
Portraying Kendall Jenner breezing through idealized streets to join a cheerful protest march and handing a Pepsi to a smiling cop as some unifying salve showed utter blindness to the agony fueling demonstrations nationwide over police brutality and systemic racism.
If earlier "Live for Now" ads struck an optimistic chord, this one curdled rapidly. Instant outrage erupted at the perceived trivialization of anguish built by decades of brutality and loss.
How could a soda dissolve such rage? This profoundly deaf message turned Pepsi overnight into an avatar for commercial co-optation of protests seeking racial justice.
Within a mere day, Pepsi pulled the damaging spot while issuing an apology for appearing to appropriate serious societal concerns to sell soda. But the wounds inflicted by such a dissonant message lingered, leaving lasting damage to Pepsi's brand reputation.
Pepsi swiftly realized the gravity of their miscalculation.
Though the "Live for Now" ethos resonated in more harmonious times, by 2017 deep societal fissures over racial injustice had been ripped open anew by tragic deaths at police hands.
Against this incendiary backdrop, an ad depicting protests over police brutality as some lively, cheerful march while suggesting Pepsi could resolve such tensions proved disastrously deaf.
Facing viral outrage and condemnation for belittling rage built by decades of violence and loss, Pepsi retracted the damaging spot within 24 hours of release.
As they pulled the ad, company executives issued an apology acknowledging their failure “to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding."
Though likely well-intentioned, equating soda with dissolving generational anguish demonstrated startling tone-deafness and an epic lack of judgment regarding issues of race dominating national consciousness.
While Pepsi stated they had not meant to trivialize the agony behind protests seeking justice, they clearly lacked perspective or consciousness of these wounds still so raw in minority communities.
Regardless of intent, the ad struck a painfully discordant chord.
The company learned the hard way that societal traumas long in the making are not so easily remedied as cracking open a bottle of Pepsi.
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