El spot de Pepsi protagonizado por Kendall Jenner fue retirado tras las críticas
In a week it was possible to see how Pepsi and United Airlines have been shaken by users on social networks and affected the image of both brands. The first one was forced to pull out a commercial starring Kendall Jenner, after the company was accused of banalizing minorities’ protests. Whereas the second was involved in a scandal due to its behavior and forced to apologized after dragging a passenger off a flight. According to Ciro Sarmiento, CCO at Dieste, small brands are receiving love and big brands are getting trolls. “I am a skeptic of internal agencies and how they can ‘think out of the box’ because they are going to grow away from their consumers and the cultures they live in. The best ideas are born at street-level, outside marketing offices and marketing thinking.”While Norberto Zylberberg, CCO and Founder at Socialisssima, feels that in-house agencies are not obsolete, after pointing out there is a surge of internal agencies that do a great job. “In the case of Pepsi, it was clear that its internal agency lacked distance and perspective. I think that what annoyed the advertising industry is that the commercial was made internally, more than how bad it was. Agencies, many times beaten, in cases like these offer a fresh perspective and ideas. This execution seemed like a brief full of cliches from the 90’s that no one will claim responsibility for and that will be forgotten in a few months.”Javier Osorio, Associate Creative Director at Mekanism, has a similar opinion, but believes that having the appropriate people and structure will allow you to understand the market and consumer with an outsider’s vision. “Maybe Kendall Jenner doesn’t have the credibility to represent the values that were tried to be conveyed in the story. But there are also problems in the story itself, maing on the role of the product in the payoff. Although the brand’s intention was good, the way the story was told was completely disconnected from the reality of te topic they tried to cover” he explains. In the United Airlines case, for creatives, honesty and transparency play an essential role in communications. “I feel it is indispensable for brands to have an honest and human attitude” points out Pablo Buffagni, Founder and Creative Leader at BBQ. “Brands are like people. The most sensible and honest thing to do is admit the mistake, apologize and abandon the topic as fast as possible” added Osorio.
