What to do When Your Advertisement Fails

This week we witnessed the mess that was Pepsi’s most recent commercial. There were two key reasons why this ad was said to fail.

1. It was tone deaf. The singer did not have a singing talent
2. It was said to be insulting when Kendall Jenner offered a Pepsi to police during a protest. Some people found this offensive because it is not true to protests.

They did this to reach the younger generation by using a celebrity and using the current protesting culture. What do you do when your plan fails? Pepsi was trying to show unity but missed their message completely. The first thing they did was pulled the ad. It was on air for about 48 hours. The next thing they did was apologize via Twitter. Check out the tweet below. 

The most important thing is they owned up to their mistake. Denying it or avoiding it makes the company look bad. Their next step is to step it up for their next advertisement. This means more market research because they do not know their market segment. Using a celebrity and current topics normally works well they just had the wrong mix of it.

None-the-less they still had the public’s eyes on them and some of the responses on Twitter were genius. My favorite was from Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King.

Best things to do in a public relations crisis is be honest with your stakeholders and keep up your communication skills. Going quiet will not help your image. Be ready for a crisis. You can never know what will go wrong this includes knowing who to go to that will handle it. Know what the public is saying about your company and the situation. Also learn from the crisis after it happens. Not only to know how to avoid the situation the next time but also know how to good your crisis response is and learn what can be done better.

Let me know what you think about Pepsi and the public’s response. How can they handle this better?