By DANIEL VICTOR
April 5, 2017
In Pepsi’s world, protests look like a pretty good time.
A new commercial from the soda company borrowed imagery from the Black Lives Matter movement and drew near immediate criticism online from people who said it trivialized the widespread protests against the killings of black people by the police.
The ad, posted to YouTube on Tuesday, shows attractive, young people holding milquetoast signs with nonspecific pleas like “Join the conversation.” The protesters are uniformly smiling, laughing, clapping, hugging and high-fiving.
In the ad’s climactic scene, a police officer accepts a can of Pepsi from Kendall Jenner, a white woman, setting off raucous approval from the protesters and an appreciative grin from the officer.
It was, current activists say, precisely the opposite of their real-world experience of protesting police brutality.
In torrid criticism after the ad was posted, commentators on social media accused Pepsi of appropriating imagery from serious protests to sell soda, while minimizing the danger protesters encounter and the frustration they feel.
Elle Hearns, the executive director of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and formerly an organizer for Black Lives Matter, said the ad “plays down the sacrifices people have historically taken in utilizing protests.”
“No one is finding joy from Pepsi at a protest,” she said. “That’s just not the reality of our lives. That’s not what it looks like to take bold action.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Pepsi said the ad, which was produced by an in-house studio, “captures the spirit and actions of those people that jump in to every moment.”
“It features multiple lives, stories and emotional connections that show passion, joy, unbound and uninhibited moments,” the company said. “No matter the occasion, big or small, these are the moments that make us feel alive.”
To many who saw the ad, it was a tone-deaf response. Pepsi did not respond to a message seeking comment on Wednesday.
The image of Ms. Jenner approaching a line of police officers mimicked a widely shared photo of Ieshia Evans, a black woman who stood firm while being charged by riot police during a protest against police brutality in Baton Rouge, La., in July.
“It has no relationship to the courage that that woman showed,” Ms. Hearns said, referring to Ms. Evans. “That woman standing in the middle of the street was not trying to be a peacemaker with the police. She was being defiant. She was actually resisting.”
Ms. Jenner, a daughter of Kris and Bruce Jenner, and a half sister to Kim, Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian, is herself a high-profile model with more than 20 million Twitter followers. Some observers accused her of cultural appropriation in 2015 by wearing her hair in cornrows, a historically black style.