Pepsi’s controversial ad featuring Kendall Jenner “solving” a protest by handing out a can of Pepsi isn’t hated by everyone, according to a new poll.
PepsiCo pulled the ad on April 5 and apologized, saying “we did not intend to make light of any serious issue,” after many people on social media criticized it for being “tone deaf.”
In contrast to the social media backlash, the Morning Consult survey found that 44 per cent of people had a more favourable view of Pepsi after watching the ad.
READ MORE: Pepsi pulls controversial Kendall Jenner ad after Twitter backlash
Only 25 per cent of those surveyed had a less favourable view of the company. And 32 per cent of Americans said the ad made them more likely to buy Pepsi products, over the 20 per cent who were less likely.
The poll also shows that about a quarter of participants age 18 to 29 said they had a less favourable view of Pepsi after watching the ad and one out of five said it made them less inclined to purchase Pepsi products.
Only 17 per cent of people ages 18 to 29 gave the ad a “not favourable at all” ranking after watching it.
According to the survey, only 28 per cent of people said they saw Jenner in a much more favourable light after watching the ad. Only 16 per cent of men surveyed said the ad made them much more favourable to Jenner, while eight per cent of women polled said the same thing.
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The polling was conducted among 2,200 adults from April 6 through April 9.
WATCH BELOW: Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Controversy
The ad was criticized for what some people saw as exploitation of the Black Lives Matter movement and other social movements.
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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.
Bernice King, the daughter of the late Martin Luther King Jr., tweeted in opposition of the ad, writing “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi.”
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The ad attempted to tap into the burgeoning political activism that’s catching fire with American youth in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s election victory, but it seemed to have the opposite effect, based on some Twitter reactions after the release.
The ad also received some attention on Saturday Night Live last weekend. Beck Bennett played the director of the commercial who takes a call from his sister while he’s on set.
He explains the concept for the ad and then the audience gets to watch his face as he hears his sister’s honest feedback on his concept.
“Sorta tone deaf?” Bennett repeats back.
And after a week of news dominated by three major public relations disasters, the internet had a field day.
Many people began to create memes and send tweets about Pepsi’s controversial ad, United Airlines overbooking crisis and Sean Spicer’s Hitler comments.
A man was forcibly removed from an overbooked United Airlines flight travelling from Chicago to Louisville on April 9, sparking outrage after videos of the incident were posted on social media.
During Spicer’s daily press briefing on April 11, the press secretary compared Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Hitler, suggesting the Nazi leader didn’t “sink to using chemical weapons.”
You can see the full results to the Morning Consult poll here.
—With a file from Adam Frisk
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