Pepsi Pulls Controversial Ad Starring Kendall Jenner

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Following a wave of criticism, Pepsi decided to pull its controversial commercial starring model Kendall Jenner on Wednesday.

In the ad released Tuesday, the Keeping Up with the Karadashians (E!) Star was in the middle of photo shoot when she notices a protest happening outside. After the model joins the crowd, she walks toward a line of policemen and offers one of them a Pepsi can. The officer takes a sip of the soda and the protesters begin to applaud and cheer.

Although the cause of the march is not specified, critics of the campaign point out that to sell a product frivolously is to make light of all the protests that have generated in result of police violence against minorities, which has shaken the country in recent years and generated movements like Black Lives Matter.

Some have compared the video captures of Jenner with the award-winning photo of African-American Ieshia Evans silently standing her ground against police dressed in riot gear in Baton Rouge after the death of Alton Sterling at the hands of the police.

At first, the controversy made the a major success on social media, reaching one million views in a few hours.

Pepsi released a statement soon after the all the criticism saying, “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.”

The company went on to release another comment stating that the intention of the commercial was not to “make light of any serious issue” and apologized to Jenner, who has not spoken on the controversy.