It’s 2017.
The world has just witnessed some very polarizing elections and there’s a very wide and tense divide on every social and political cause.
The digital world has especially been witness to this divide, with tensions running very high on every online discussion.
Amidst all this, two major global beverage brands risked it all by aligning themselves with highly controversial social causes.
Pepsi & Heineken.
It’s pretty well-known that brand social activism can make your social media engagement and brand value shoot through the roof, but there’s a right way to do it and a very wrong way. As demonstrated by Heineken & Pepsi.
In April, Pepsi decided to launch their latest campaign anthem ‘Live For The Moment’ intended to celebrate life’s such moments. The ad stars Kendall Jenner and an array of trendy millennials who leave behind their daily life and join what seems to be a protest (representative of the Black Lives Matter Movement). While the tension between the protestors and the police is evident, Kendall manages to break it by handing a Pepsi to the police, that seemingly bridges the divide between the police and the protestors.
The ad received a ton of backlash on every social media channel forcing them to take down the ad and issue an apology. Here’s what went terribly wrong.
For starters, picking a cause so freshly controversial was bound to ruffle a few feathers. But when a cause is linked to racial divide, killing of innocents and an ongoing protest; throwing in a product, much less, a soda as the solution to the problem is trivializing the entire issue!
The Pepsi ad is also class act of Influence Marketing gone wrong.
Kendall Jenner is hardly a celebrity crusader for justice, is she?
Check out the ad for yourself.
http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/pepsis-tone-deaf-kendall-jenner-ad-co-opting-the-resistance-is-getting-clobbered-in-social/
Heineken wonderfully released their cause-aligned campaign just a few weeks later, titled ‘Worlds Apart’. The ad is a social experiment that pairs strangers with polar opposite views and values, such as a feminist and an anti-feminist, a climate change believer and sceptic and a transgender with a rigid gender believer. The ad puts the opposites in a warehouse with the task of assembling a bar and the participants get talking. The climax shows the pairs having successfully assembled the bar with their Heineken in hand, watching a video of their partner completely rejecting their core values.
The pair is then given the choice to either share the beer with their partner or walk away. Not surprisingly, no one walks away but chooses to hear one another out.
The ad is a refreshing take on differing opinions; having an opinion completely different from someone should be met with discussion and understanding rather than hate, even better if it’s over a beer.
Watch the ad here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wYXw4K0A3g&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8wYXw4K0A3g&has_verified=1
What’s interesting to see is that, both the brands took a similar approach; adopting a cause and integrating their product with it, in a not-so-subtle manner.
So how did one of them get it so wrong and one right?
Pepsi chose to go with a single cause, a controversial cause such as the Black Lives Matter Movement, and offered a rather trivial solution to the problem. Heineken on the other hand, didn’t directly take up a cause. Rather they focused on a perspective, a pertinent problem related to all causes, but none in specific. It just puts forth the idea that we call can be more accepting of each other despite different beliefs.
Every cause has it’s haters and believers and by picking none, Heineken won!
Pepsi chose a brand ambassador; Kendall Jenner who’s hardly a social or a political icon. It’s pretty obvious that Kendall was selected to get more clicks, further mocking the ads purpose.
Heineken on the other hand, used real people/ models for the job, adding to the realistic element of the ad.
The final nail in Pepsi’s coffin was the positioning of the product as the solution to a social problem which is by far, the most laughable element in the ad. Heineken got it right by not offering the product as the solution rather a the promoter of the solution. In short, beer just doing it’s job of making conversations happen, which seamlessly fits it worth the message of the ad.
This has been a great learning example for all marketers and advertisers.
Brand social activism is a very risky game. And here’s why.
Millennials can smell a pitch from a mile away. They know when they are being sold to. And, placing your product in the midst of an important social cause is the completely wrong way to do it.
While it’s great for your brand to support a cause, you have to make sure you aren’t doing it in a superficial manner as this can do some serious harm to your brand.