Pepsi says it’s pulling Kendall Jenner ad that ignited a firestorm of controversy

Pepsi is pulling an ad that has been widely criticized for appearing to trivialize protests for social justice causes.

“Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding,” the company said Wednesday in a news release. “Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize.”

It said it was “removing the content and halting any further rollout.”

The ad shows Kendall Jenner, a member of the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” reality TV family, stepping away from a modeling shoot to join a crowd of young protesters. The protesters cheer after Jenner hands a can of Pepsi to a police officer, who takes a sip.

The commercial borrowed imagery from the Black Lives Matter movement and drew near immediate criticism online from people who said it trivialized the widespread protests against the killings of black people by police.

The ad shows attractive young people holding milquetoast signs with nonspecific pleas like “Join the conversation.” The protesters are uniformly smiling, laughing, clapping, hugging and high-fiving.

In the ad’s climactic scene, a police officer accepts a can of Pepsi from Kendall Jenner, a white woman, setting off raucous approval from the protesters and an appreciative grin from the officer.

It was, current activists say, precisely the opposite of their real-world experience of protesting police brutality.

PepsiCo Inc. had previously said the ad would “be seen globally across TV and digital” platforms, and had stood by the ad late Tuesday. In its statement Wednesday, PepsiCo apologized to Jenner for putting her “in this position.”

Critics say the image of Jenner handing the officer a Pepsi evoked a photo of Black Lives Matter protester Ieshia Evans approaching an officer at a demonstration in Baton Rouge last year.

Others criticized the protesters’ signs for being comically innocuous, with messages like “Join the Conversation” and heart and peace signs. The website Gothamist expressed a common sentiment online in calling the ad “gloriously tone-deaf.”

Among those mocking the ad was Bernice King, who tweeted a photo of her father, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., being confronted by a police officer at a protest march. “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi,” the tweet said.

Jenner, a daughter of the television personalities Kris and Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, and a half sister to Kim, Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian, is herself a high-profile model and reality star with more than 20 million Twitter followers.

This story was originally published April 5, 2017 at 11:16 AM with the headline "Pepsi says it’s pulling Kendall Jenner ad that ignited a firestorm of controversy."