This could be good: In the 1940s, when Coke defined mass, white America, Pepsi hired Af-Am salespeople and targeted black consumers.pic.twitter.com/59cq6UyWmI
Thread: Pepsi has a long, strange history with ads and black culture. It comes from Pepsi’s self-definition as the un-Coke.pic.twitter.com/OK1OfEwCRO
-
-
-
By the early 1950s, black consumers bought Pepsi 3x more than Coke.
-
In the 1960s, Pepsi placed ads in magazines like Ebony. Many paralleled white ads, but still, they were early to “integration.”pic.twitter.com/lkYuq7086H
-
These ads created the idea of a “Pepsi Generation,” defining drinkers as part of a youth movement, vs. stodgy mainstream Coke.pic.twitter.com/RsrZUYp5c9
-
The genius: *anyone* could join the Pepsi generation if you only “think young.” An early example of using “cool” to sell.pic.twitter.com/9PSM6SHIvY
-
They also sold Pepsi using examples of black success.pic.twitter.com/q0eOO8E3ft
-
But by the late ’60s, young didn’t wear a tie. So Pepsi co-opted (white) counterculture. You need to watch this ad:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2LJW-2IkQE …
-
As critic Thomas Frank wrote, Pepsi was “celebrating happy nonconformity and real-life otherness…Both carnivalesque and commercial.”
-
In ads for black audiences, Pepsi (very softly) co-opted images of black power. Note hair, hands, “rapping.”pic.twitter.com/tOwU9mj35q
-
By the 1980s, black culture signified cool to everyone--Michael Jackson sold Pepsi to black AND white audiences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0jY4WvCIc …
-
But "cool" is hard to pull off, so Pepsi often struggled to express its core identity: “for those who think young.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fugLhNbwoY …
-
In the recent ad, Pepsi tried to find cool & saw protests: BLM, Women’s, int’l like Hong Kong? & said “protest is how to think young today.”pic.twitter.com/Axy5q9IH7f
-
But unlike earlier ads that tried (sometimes awkwardly) to speak *with* audiences of color, this simply appropriated POC.pic.twitter.com/kHEurwat3E
-
Particularly weird is the racial coding of the wig and lipstick removal. What is the racial transformation going on here?pic.twitter.com/EMschezack
-
Of course, Jenner appropriated cornrows a few years ago. Why make this callback? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/02/marie-claire-kendall-jenner-cornrows-tweet_n_5078924.html …
-
In sum, it is a typical (if terribly executed) example of corporate messaging in 2017: diversity as commodity, consumption as participation.pic.twitter.com/alwERXe40H
- 2 more replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.