A Pepsi Commercial’s Lesson — How Could Marketing Go Wrong?

Luke Peng
2 min readApr 7, 2017

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Kendall Jenner in the Pepsi ad. CreditPepsi Global, via YouTube

Just like many of its global brand counterparts, Pepsi is known for it’s outlandish and eye-catching commercials, like this one.

Pepsi’s 2004 Super Bowl Commercial, featuring Beyónce, Britney Spears and Pink

How could Pepsi’s billion dollar marketing go wrong, right?

Pepsi aired a commercial named “ Jump In”, via its YouTube channel April 4th, 2017. Featuring Kendall Jenner, it starts with peaceful protest. Quite fitting the current social environment, isn’t it?

Although not sure what “Join The Conversation” sign means.

Then there is our fabulous Kendall Jenner and her assistant.

And some random white girls having brunch or eating oysters.

Then there is this another random Asian kid with a cello.

Then our Kendall strips her blonde wig and gave it to her assistant. Somehow the black girl seems a bit pissed.

But at the end, everyone seems pretty happy.

Okay, seems to be a pretty normal Pepsi marketing.

Not sure why, this commercial “sparks outrage”, with many people calling it disastrous and “Worst Ad Ever”, and our 21-year-old reality star “feels horrible and devastated”.

Last we know, Pepsi pulled this commercial off its YouTube channel last Wednesday, one day after it aired.

Alright, so what do you think went wrong?

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Luke Peng

Founder@AnyaUp: effective solutions to grow your business. Previous Tourwithme & PayPal.