piece of cake if you've kept up with the kardashians in the past year or so you
may have seen this
if you felt anything like I did when you saw it you might have reacted a little
like this but in this video I'd like to move beyond pure disgust and dig into
some of the marketing techniques that Kendall Jenner's Pepsi had brought to
the forefront of the national conversation in 1999 Naomi Klein came
out with the book no logo which essentially outlines how in the 20th
century companies shifted their focus away from having better products toward
having better brands the word brand in this context essentially refers to the
public image of the company or in other words it's not what they're actually
producing but rather how they want us to feel about their company a good
corporation by the end of the 20th century was not one that made the best
shoes or the best coffee or the best soft drink but rather one that had a
unique and attractive identity here the examples are endless and almost even
obvious when you really start to look for them because we now live in a fully
branded world however back in the 1960s and 70s a company like Nike for example
simply sold shoes it competed with other shoe companies to sell shoes and their
ads were often centered around explaining why their shoes were superior
we developed one of the most sophisticated sport research labs in the
world to let us see in detail the peculiarities of style the dynamics of
foot strike and at Nike we're putting that knowledge to work making shoes that
actually help athletes to run faster and safer and the same went for their
competitors my size 13s get support protection and a custom fit star tech
unit saddle protects my ankles and gives that extra mid foot support a rebounder
needs but by the mid-80s Reebok had cornered the market on trendy aerobics
shoes so Nike decided to reinvent itself Phil Knight the company's co-founder
announced that Nikes mission was no longer to sell shoes but instead to
enhance people's lives through sports and fitness overnight they taken what
was once a shoe company and branded it as a company that keeps the magic of
sports alive and that's when we start seeing commercials
more like this nowadays they fully transcended their simple shoe
manufacturer role and continued to evolve the company's newfound identity
semi-mythical athletic figures like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods became so
closely associated with the Nike brand that people myself included actually
began to believe they could buy the shoes and play at least a little bit
more like Mike and it's not that hard to believe when you see kids your age in
the commercials working out alongside your idols with the same hyper cinematic
tone and style what was once a simple product has
become a full-on lifestyle and many of our top American consumer companies have
used these same branding techniques to maintain a strong grip on their
respective markets coca-cola tried to associate itself with happiness
Burger King with masculinity and McDonald's with family and it's
important to recognize that this is still a hugely dominant trend in
advertising just check out this mountain dew commercial with NBA superstar
Russell Westbrook they say don't practice shots you wouldn't shoot in a
game they say don't pregame to slow jabs they say don't eat seafood in Oklahoma
they say a lot of things don't do they do you now if we take a moment to unpack
this essentially what they're saying is don't let anyone tell you how to live
your life drink mountain be an individual now think for yourself buy
and actually also do let Russell Westbrook tell you to drink Mountain Dew
drink and let him tell you not to listen to what other people say while you're
drinking Mountain Dew because well a lot of people these days are saying that
Mountain Dew is the most disgusting drink ever manufactured now before we
get to the enlightened brand I'd like to draw a distinction between what I'll
call a relevant brand and a random brand although it's fairly clear that the Nike
brand doesn't exactly equal the Nike product there is at least still some
logic there Nike sells athletic gear athletes need
to wear athletic gear athletes work really really hard and
some even achieve greatness so through a few degrees of separation we can
conceivably come to the conclusion that Nike shoes equal greatness or at least
are associated with greatness but a random brand in my definition is when
there isn't any clear connection between the product itself and the brand
identity a company is trying to put forward like Tommy Hilfiger and hip-hop
or even Tommy Hilfiger and rock and roll and it feels especially sinister when a
random brand represents the exact opposite of the product it's pushing
like telling someone that buying the fourth most popular soft drink in the
country will make you more of a unique individual constantly we see examples of
this brand versus product hypocrisy like Reeboks campaign to give out human
rights awards when they themselves have committed countless human rights
violations
now it's important to recognize that in reality the distinction between relevant
and random is more of a spectrum than two opposing categories a company like
McDonald's emphasizing family life probably falls somewhere between the
Nike and Mountain Dew examples since one could conceivably like I did growing up
eat McDonald's with their family but the really scary part of this for me is that
if the brand doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with the product
itself nothing is off-limits our deepest most human desires for love and
friendship for safety and security and even for societal progress for
revolution for hope and equality can all be appropriated to maximize profits and
that's where we get to what all refer to as the enlightened brand essentially an
enlightened brand is one that tries to create a brand identity around some sort
of socially progressive political movement and over the past few decades
as companies have learned more and more how important branding is to their
success countless attempts have been made to appropriate the language culture
and ideals of social movements in order to sell products and increase profit
this in a way is what Apple was doing in the late 90s with the slogan think
different which has become increasingly ironic over time as their products have
become more and more Universal Apple since their landmark 1984 Super Bowl
commercial has taken on the quintessential enlightened brand image
but at least with Apple I will concede that they're still trying to claim some
relationship between their actual products and their revolutionary spirit
a lot more common though are the random enlightened brands or companies who
products have absolutely nothing to do with whatever socially progressive
politics they're pretending to put forward what do I tell my daughter
why do I tell her that despite her education her drive her skills her
intelligence she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever
meets or maybe I'll be able to tell her something different today ads that
capitalize on feminist politics specifically are so popular that they've
been given the name marketplace feminism by editor and co-founder of bitch
magazine Andy's Eisler even Nike eventually hopped on the enlightened
brand bandwagon trying more or less arbitrarily to associate their sweatshop
manufactured shoes with equality the ball should bounce the same for everyone
if we can be sequence here you can be vehicles everywhere
now there is a school of thought that says these enlightened brands whether
relevant or random do bring more media representation to marginalized groups
and marginalize issues and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the always liked
a girl campaign or the Nike equality campaign both gave me chills when I
watch them in my research for this video but in my opinion in a system in which
the brand and the actual product can be entirely separate and in a system that
prioritizes profit above all else there is always something inherently
hypocritical and sinister about an enlightened brand but if you disagree I
highly encourage debate on this issue in the comments section I'm still a little
unsure myself a lot less debatable though is one of our newest enlightened
brands who happen to use one of our newest American icons Jenner kendall
Jenner kendall Jenner she has a new commercial for Pepsi within hours of the
ads release the internet had exploded meme after meme stormed the web mocking
into writing Pepsi for appropriating the imagery and social landscape created
specifically by the black lives matter movement and narrative Lee suggesting
that perhaps all these vague social problems could be solved by a rich
supermodel and a can of you guessed it Pepsi as Wired magazine claimed this ad
did at least unite the internet in outrage and almost right away it was
taken down with the release of this statement nothing could have more
perfectly embodied the random enlightened brand now as with any trend
in advertising or with any trend in any artistic or creative medium over time it
starts to get stale predictable or worse transparent at first an advertising
scheme might be so new and fresh and different that the public can't help but
be wowed by its content but over time the more these same mechanisms are used
the more they start to look like a caricature of themselves like a parody
of the enlightened brand like well like this it would be great if human beings
were great at being human infant of all of mankind were made
up of kind women and kinder men it would be spectacular if the Golden Rule was
golden to every man and the good things that we ever did was
everything that we can treating others like we'd like to be treated has always
been our guiding principle most of these ads hoping to avoid controversy keep
their progressive ideas as vague as possible not attaching themselves to any
specific social movement but instead vaguely just to goodness itself my
theory or maybe just my hope about the kendall Jenner Pepsi ad is that it fits
so perfectly into the ultimately sinister enlightened brand concept that
it actually shocked the American public in to seeing the sinister nature of this
entire trend in branding this ad was so over-the-top appropriative of the issue
so random relative to its actual product that it acted almost as a parody of
enlightened brand advertising forcing the internet's unite against its
obviously ridiculous intentions and if you don't believe me that the reaction
to this ad represents a crucial progression in American culture I
suggest that we look back at one of the most important moments in advertising
history
notable for its appearance in the Mad Men finale this coca-cola commercial
essentially functions in the exact same way the Pepsi ad does they take the
aesthetic and cultural significance of an American movement that protests
violence against millions of people and claims that what the world really needs
is a little bit of their product and how did the public react well it was still
28 years before no logo would come out over a decade before Apple would become
a household brand it was too new too fresh the commercial was a wild success
in 2007 campaign magazine called it quote one of the best-loved in most
influential ads in TV history but in 2017 an ad that operates on the same
fundamental principles was immediately pulled from the internet and I will
admit that the Coke ad isn't quite as heinous as the Pepsi ad and suggesting
that their product could directly solve the issue but I think that really points
to the fact that this branding strategy has become more severe and ridiculous
over time the same cultural progression can be seen in the Marriott ad I showed
earlier I watched this in full on YouTube after seeing it on Hulu and
naturally skeptical I scrolled down to the comments section only to find all
the top voted comments pointing to the obvious hypocrisy of this random brand
in the information age it's much harder to slip something like this past the
American consumer just one person has to do the proper research comments on the
video and all the rest of us have to do is up vote it and then try to avoid that
company's products in my mind companies like Pepsi and Marriott as opposed to
spending add money to convince us to buy their products are accidentally spending
just to show us how absurd these branding strategies have always been by
acting as parodies of brand hypocrisy these ads can shock the American
consumer into awareness of any brands disconnect from their actual product so
Thank You Pepsi if nothing else hopefully your vomit worthy commercial
has led us a little closer to the death of the enlightened brain
I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love I like to teach the
world to sing
piece of cake