Remember the ad by Pepsi featuring Kendall Jenner in 2017?

Collaborating with the world’s biggest supermodel to target a soft drink at millennials seems like a harmless idea. Although, just 24 hours after airing its latest celebrity-driven TV campaign, Pepsi was attacked by spectacularly negative social media furor.

By 5th April, the Pepsi ad, created by PepsiCo’s in-house content creation arm, aired on 3 April, had 124,598 social media mentions according to digital agency Meltwater. And of the 105,524 posts by members of the public, 45% (47,202) had been negative compared to 27% (28,871) that were positive.

Within 2 days of its release, on YouTube, it had more than 15k dislikes compared to just 3k likes.

Responding to the mayhem online, a Pepsi’s spokesperson says- “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”.

So, what went wrong? The ad shows a multi-millionaire model in a ramp-walk outfit with sleek hair & heels, who hasn’t (yet) participated in serious matters such as Black Lives Matter (EVER!!!!) until the ad feature, prances about among middle- class, frustrated-looking, multi-cultural artists, who are demanding the basic human right to MATTER. She marches over furiously to join the protestors who are carrying signs with family-friendly messages such as “Join the conversation”.

She simply picks up an ice-cold Pepsi and walks over to a nearby Muslim cop (who is frowning over the protest), and hands him Pepsi. With her magical offering, suddenly the cop starts smiling & everybody in the crowd start hugging. In the end, the slogan ‘Live for Now’ flashes up on the screen.

To make the matter worse, Jenner’s symbolic walk over to the police, mirrors BLM protestor Leshia Evans in reality, who was arrested and forcibly thrown to the ground when she dared to walk over to US officers.

Not only this story the ad is shoddy attempt of storytelling it has also cannibalized itself by mimicking an activist, making the story even less believable. It also appears fake, one more and the most important aspect- to show that you care about something while you never didn’t- especially if it had never been an active part of your brand value.

This incident doesn’t cost mere a mayhem for a couple of days but also tarnishes Pepsi’s brand image- which is a very, very serious concern. More and more aware, educated, informed millennials want to associate themselves with a brand that is authentic in the least. This cheap attempt by Coke is a reminder to how important it is for brands to have a purpose- and more importantly- to actively communicate and act on that purpose. And being authentic in doing so is of course a prerequisite.

Marketing is like a rock in the dark that we marketers are trying to climb. We latch onto anything that comes through analytics and use it as a ruse to justify and increase our marketing budget.

We are in an ever-elusive marketing era where theories are being formed, denigrated, and discarded at a meteoric speed. 5 years ago, SEO & SEM were the toast of the town and now we are seen going back to our old marketing textbooks learning the definition of brand purpose and brand values.? There is a frenzy to find the best combination from the arsenal of all known and unknown marketing practices (SEO V/s PPC, SEM V/s brand marketing) to achieve both- long- and short-term success.

When I hear the phrase- “a purpose driven company”, the Bodyshop’s name pops over in my head. With the purpose -Fighting for a Fairer and More Beautiful World they are everywhere from fighting for mental health, to animal testing, to LGBTQ rights to sustainability. Bodyshop has been doing since 1976, ever since it existed but a great example to look at would be Airbnb.

Did you know that early 90% of Airbnb’s traffic remains direct? The travel accommodation business cut sales and marketing spend by 28% to $229m over the first quarter of 2021, “primarily” a result of slashing performance marketing investment. And it intends to keep the marketing expenditure as a share of revenue constant since then.

In 2021, CEO Brian Chesky said Airbnb now looks at the role of marketing as one of “education”, not “to buy customers”. Reaffirming that position this week, Chesky added that performance marketing is thought of as a “laser” to home in on balancing supply and demand.

The business launched its first large-scale brand marketing campaign in five years in early 2021, ‘Made Possible by Hosts’. During the fourth quarter, overall traffic to the Airbnb platform increased almost 20% in the seven countries where the campaign ran, compared to the final quarter of 2019.

This campaign is followed by “Strangers” in the fourth quarter of 2021 and since then there are “Don’t go there, live there.”, “Get an Airbnb”.

If you look at all these campaigns, there is one thing pervasive. While the narrations are different, the brand wants to communicate one, single, promise- “Belong Anywhere”- which is the mantra, or you may call it- purpose of the brand. A lot has been written about why companies should figure out their ‘Why’ (most recently Simon Sinek’s ‘Start with Why’).

In the cobweb of all the brand jargons if a brand can define what it gives a damn about- as I call it, it becomes easily recognizable and trustworthy. As Rory Sutherland says (and I paraphrase) - people don’t look for an option that is super good usually, they look for something which is the least horrible.

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