Pepsi’s ‘Diet Woke’ fiasco shows a brand massively missing mark

MARK RITSON
April 10, 2017
The Australian

By now you have almost certainly seen the ad. A colleague sent it to you, or you watched it as part of a news story that described what a disaster it was. Kendall Jenner, the up and coming model and member of the omnipresent Kardashian family, is doing a photo shoot in a blonde wig.

Suddenly, the shoot is overwhelmed by clean cut, super cool protesters who are angry about — you know — stuff.

Taken aback by this sudden upsurge in youth protest, and a particularly attractive protester among the ranks who has brought his cello with him (obviously), Jenner throws off her wig and joins the throng.

But she’s not done yet. Oh no. Among the fist-bumping, Jenner spots a bowl of perfectly presented Pepsi cans and bottles on ice. She takes one and approaches the policemen that ring the crowd. 

To the delight of the amassed hordes she gives one of the policemen, the hunky one, her can of Pepsi. He drinks it and looks at his colleagues with a knowing, let’s-all-get-with-the-vibe look on his face. Live bolder, exclaims the ad. Live louder it says. Live for the now.

So ends easily the most misjudged ad campaign of 2017 and, quite possibly the current decade. It took approximately 10 minutes for the new campaign, released in a flurry of publicity last week, to stoke the anger of every major civil rights group in America. 

Worse, the ad was also widely panned for its embarrassingly out of touch representation of youth by the very consumers, Millennials, it was meant to inspire.

Even the company that produced the ad, Pepsico, did not stand behind it. Just 24 hours after last week’s launch it had pulled the ad and apologised.

“Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding,” the company explained. “Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologise”.

Unfortunately, pulling an ad these days does not lessen the impact; if anything, it actually fans the flames of exposure. 

The ad continues to circulate on social media and has become a hot topic among most news programs and late night chat shows. Despite the extensive coverage of the dismal ad and its subsequent fallout one question remains unanswered: why? How could Pepsico, one of the world’s biggest and most venerated marketing companies, make such an extraordinarily bad ad? 

To answer that question you must first appreciate the massive changes that have taken hold of marketing departments over the past five years both here and overseas. The world of branding has evolved to a place of such nonsense in the past five years that it almost defies belief. Traditionally marketers worked on what was called a “benefit ladder” in which they tried to move beyond simple product features to more valuable, differentiated claims for their products. The Australian, for example, could use the product claim that each day it breaks more news stories than any other media outlet. But what is the product benefit of size? The answer could be a claim that The Australian provides more news to its reader than any other paper. But what is the customer benefit of being served more news? To ensure its readers are informed Australians. 

By moving from product features to product benefits to a customer benefit, a brand is better positioned in the market and ultimately becomes stronger and more attractive.

In recent years, however, many marketers have attempted to go even further up the benefit ladder. Why stop with consumer benefits? Why not talk about what we believe in and about our role in society? As the marketing consultant Simon Sinek puts it: “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it”. It’s nonsense, of course.

People mostly do buy brands for what they do. Brands are small parts of our lives, not major concerns that we interrogate and worry about. But in the ultimate example of losing touch with consumers and taking themselves and their brands too seriously, many marketers now focus on their brand mission or brand purpose at the expense of lowly customer benefits.

Coca-Cola is no longer a refreshing beverage. It’s a brand that believes its mission is to “inspire moments of optimism”. Ikea isn’t about flat pack furniture; oh no, it’s about “making everyday life better”. Starbucks does not see itself as just a decent cup of coffee in a nice environment — its brand purpose is to “inspire the human spirit”.

Clearly The Australian’s positioning is out of touch with this new spirit of branding. Rather than being “For the informed Australian” we should see ourselves as “the inspirational and attractive friend who holds your hand as you traverse the eternal challenges of existence”. I’ll mention it to the chief executive.

Seen in this light, it’s clear just why Pepsi was attempting “to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding”. Like most other large brands, it has completely lost the positioning plot.

Specifically, the brand’s mission is to “inspire people to live exciting and stimulating lives by unlocking the excitement of the moment”. The ad might be a cringe-worthy execution, but it’s the result of a deeper, more flawed strategic approach that is completely detached from consumer reality and commercial probity.

Normally, the company’s ad agency would step in at some point and gently suggest that the campaign might be “off brief”, restore sanity and save the day. But, again, in a growing trend across larger companies, Pepsico created their ad in-house without the use of an external agency.

There was no one there to stop the Pepsi marketing machine from overstating its role in consumers lives, inflating the brand’s place in culture and inserting itself into delicate societal issues in the most crass and unappealing manner imaginable.

That is, of course, until the ad went live. And you know what happened next.