Appropriating Black Lives Matter?

            Over the weekend Pepsi released a commercial featuring Kendall Jenner that has since sparked outrage from many people around the world. If you have not seen the commercial I will post the highlights:

-        Kendall Jenner starts out in a blonde wig but then takes it off

-       Showing a crowd of protestors holding signs that make zero sense

-       Kendall grabs a Pepsi and walks through the crowd of protestors

-       Walks up to the police who are there holding back the crowd and shares the Pepsi with him

I would link the whole ad but it has since been taken down from YouTube but I will include the closest one I can find.

After the commercial was released people were very confused as to what the message was supposed to be. Can Pepsi stop protests?

Pepsi spoke up and said this about the commercial

“This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that’s an important message to convey,”

           

Pepsi might have had good intentions but to me this ad seems to me to be a way to make money by trying to relate to people who were involved with the protests and the movement. Although that is exactly the opposite of what it is doing. I’m glad so many people stood up against this commercial and called out Pepsi’s (excuse my language) bullshit.

 People have been calling out the similarities between this shot of Kendall Jenner in the ad and a photo of Ieshia Evans during a protest after the death of Alton Sterling

            To me this just seems to be mocking the real effort of people all over the world who have been protesting against the many issues we have been facing. By showing something so similar to Ieshia Evans situation but saying that this product “saved the day” is much different to what actually happened. Evans was arrested after that photo was taken for protesting. Many tweets were posted by people who were arrested during various protests wondering if they had had a Pepsi would they not have been arrested? This whole commercial just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Honestly it is just so surprising that this idea went through how many board rooms and meetings to get to the point of actually filming it and releasing it? How do that many people think this is okay? All I can imagine is a board room full of older white men in suits asking themselves, “What issue should we highlight in our commercial to make it seem like we care?”. If there was even one person of color in that room I doubt this commercial would have even been discussed. Especially when they use Kendall Jenner, someone who is Caucasian and I have not once seen her discuss any major movements in the public eye. For someone with so much influence you would think they would stand up for issues that are going on.

Overall this commercial was a huge mistake by Pepsi. Every time you go online for the past couple days all I have seen is people mocking them and vowing to stop buying their products. Next time they make a commercial I’m sure they will be more careful as to not make it so obvious they are trying to make money by appropriating real life movements.

Resources: 

http://people.com/food/pepsi-responds-kendall-jenner-backlash-protest-ad/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4CCkUVXHBQ

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/04/media/kendall-jenner-pepsi-ad/index.html
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/05/kendall-jenners-pepsi-ad-causes-twitter-storm-labeled-disrespectful.html