Did These Celebs Sell Their Souls For A Paycheck?

Publish date: 2024-03-15

Advertisers will often jump on bandwagons to make their product seem as relevant as possible, though Pepsi admitted it "missed the mark" with a commercial starring Keeping Up With the Kardashians star Kendall Jenner

The ad shows Jenner walking off a photo shoot to join an ongoing street protest in the vein of the Black Lives Matter movement. She approaches a police barrier and offers one lucky officer a cold can of Pepsi, a gesture that was supposed to "project a global a message of unity, peace and understanding," according to a company statement.

Not many people saw it that way. Advocacy group Change of Color slammed Jenner after the ad aired, tweeting, "Stop appropriating our pain and struggle." Jenner remained quiet in the aftermath, but an insider told Hollywood Life that she was traumatized by the fiasco. "She had such high hopes for it," the source said, "and now she's terrified she will never work again or become a laughing stock. The world sees her as this glamorous, sophisticated, jet-setting woman, but she's only 21 and she's very sensitive. This has been very painful and embarrassing to her." For what it's worth, Pepsi pulled the ad and personally apologized to Jenner.

Whether Jenner will ever live this down is anyone's guess, though it certainly doesn't look like it will go away anytime soon. In fact, Pepsi has actually become an ironic weapon of choice at social rallies. A May Day 2017 demonstration in Portland, Ore. was shut down after a protester threw a full can of the soda at police.

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