More into Pepsi’s crisi

  

The advertisement of Pepsi featuring Kendall Jenner that was released last year 2017 for the campaign “Live for Now” in YouTube, sparked a lot of conversations in several media and fields. The reaction of the public towards it was rather critical because the ad had references to the Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March movements. The public criticized the use of serious social issues for a brand profit and the trivialization of the struggle of people.

Source: PR Week

Of course, Public Relations professionals paid attention to it and analyzed the whole process of Pepsi’s handling of the crisis for the sake of knowledge and learning, some from a negative perspective, other from a positive one. For instance, in her reflection, Van Loon (2018) points out that Pepsi dealt properly with the crisis because they reacted fast.

The matter of time of reaction is of great importance in crisis communication because the social media have dramatically speed up the way the information is circulates. Social media in general and Twitter in particular are the first channels in which the event disseminates at a very high speed causing the crisis (Sung & Hwang, 2014). (Sung & Hwang, 2014). The biggest problem for the organization with the early spread is that the event is interpreted and framed by the public and this frame is disseminated together with the event information (Van der Meer, 2016). Obviously, when this frame is negatively valenced, there is a crisis.

Therefore, speed and negative framing of the information disseminated via social media are the main reasons for a company to react as fast as possible, because as soon as there is information from the company, the buzz starts to disappear (Sung & Hwang, 2014). Nevertheless, still today there are signs of not full recovery of Pepsi’s damaged reputation because the purchase consideration is at the lowest since 2015, according to study.

On the other hand, Weergang (2018) considered that the reaction was incorrect because Pepsi firstly reacted in a defensive manner and, afterwards, apologized and pulled the ad. Even though the final strategy followed the appropriate steps by Coombs’s Situational Crisis Communication Theory (2007) that Van Loon stated, those came too late. Again, it is a matter of time, but, from this perspective, the problem is a first bad reaction that could have invalidated the crisis communication strategy.

As the expert Ewald van Rooij, director of Lindblom indicates, it is very important for an organization to have a plan of action in place taking into consideration several possible types of crisis and react according to the appropriate strategy as soon as possible. However, the actions and the people must all be aligned with the strategy. Unfortunately, the defensive first step of Pepsi was not aligned with the following response strategy to apologize and it caused more negative reactions that, apparently, further efforts could not totally solve.

In conclusion, the two main threats to take into account for a proper handling of a crisis are the speed of the social media and the framing of the information by the public but if the alignment of all parts under the same strategy is not correct, the crisis will not properly be solved.

About the author:

Carla Navarro is a Social Sciences traveler, from a not finished BA in Sociology to a nearly finished MA in Communication Science passing by a completed BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and a MA in Visual Anthropology. She feels that this will be her last stop and will finally put her knowledge into a proper job, although she decided to start a music documentary festival in Amsterdam.

References:

Coombs, W. T. (2007). Protecting organization reputations during a crisis- The development and application of situational crisis communication theory. Corporate reputation review, 10(3), 163-176.

Sung, M., & Hwang, J.-S. (2014). Who drives a crisis? The diffusion of an issue through social networks. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 246–257.

Van der Meer, T.G.L.A. (2016) Public Frame building: the role of source usage in times of crisis. Communication Research 2016.

Van Loon, K. (2018). How Pepsi handled its PR crisis. Public Relations, Media and the Public. Retrieved from: https://publicrelationsmediathepublic1819s1.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-pepsi-handled-its-pr-crisis.html

Van Rooij, E. (2018). Guest lecture crisis communications [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from: https://canvas.uva.nl/courses/3068/modules

Weergang, I. (2018). A controversial Pepsi ad starring Kendall Jenner. . Public Relations, Media and the Public. Retrieved from: https://publicrelationsmediathepublic1819s1.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-controversial-pepsi-ad-starring.html

Don't do it?

Nike has received a lot of backlash following using Colin Kaepernick for their Just Do It campaign. Kaepernick is an athlete and activist against police brutality. He took the knee during a football match which resulted into widespread (online) criticism, which even featured a furious tweet from the American president. After using Kaepernick, Nike received besides a huge following, also a huge backlash, including a boycott (Vox.com). On social media, a lot of people started uploading videos or images of burning Nike products under the hashtag #BurnYourNikes. The hashtag, however, seemed to have been used mostly in tweets mocking the brand’s opponents. Nike has since stood by their campaign and seemed to even have gained a better reputation and market position. It is clear that Nike has used the mixed commotion resulting from taking a political stance to their advantage. It can be, however, considered risky of a consumer brand that initially is not politically affiliated or natured to take a strong political position in a heated topic such as racism. Perhaps surprisingly, the engagement of such brands in political activism through their marketing and PR campaigns seems to become more and more a trend. It worked out for Nike, but was this a case of pure luck? Is it worth the potential anti-brand activism amongst consumers that such a campaign can trigger?

Figure 1 Source: https://brokenglasspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Burning-nikes-2-1024x675.jpg

Burnt?

The reason why Nike’s campaign worked could be attributed to Nike’s good estimation of how much empathy in comparison to how much hate they would receive. The moral or political issue at hand (police brutality) may have brought a very divided discussion amongst the American population, but racism is lately generally in media treated as a structural problem in American society. Police brutality is an act of violence and a large group of people, especially younger generations, in the US regard it as a huge problem. Research (Romani et al., 2015; Dauvergne, 2017) has found that a lot of anti-brand activism actually results from empathic people disliking immoral practices of brands (i.e. using palm oil or using sweatshops). If the political issue at hand opposes immoral behavior (i.e. police brutality in Nike’s case) anti brand-activism is logically likely to be lower. Another research has shown that a lot of damage control following a brand crisis can be done by the general public themselves on social media (Sung & Hwang, 2014). This was also the case with Nike: lots of (young) people, clouded the hashtag to mock those who used it seriously. This shows that Nike’s ‘risky’ political campaign was perhaps not as risky after all. As the majority of those active on social media were in favor of their stance, they hardly had to step in with PR strategies to ‘save’ their reputation from the initial backlash. Being smart about what message you endorse and stance you take might help you as a company to not only use politics as a helpful tool to constitute what your brand stands for, but also to help you control potential damage you might suffer without a lot of resources or PR effort. Nike might have taken a knee, but clearly did not lose their face.

Tamara Raats is a Communication Science Research Master student at the University of Amsterdam, who is mainly interested in persuasive, digital and entertainment communication.