PROVING PURPOSE: How New Zealand brands drive meaning from within
If international examples have taught us anything, it’s that when it comes to brands celebrating diversity and inclusion, showing up is easy, but institutional change is hard. Brand campaigns that miss the mark quickly become labelled tone-deaf, and if intentions are anything other than genuine – they will be categorised as tokenism or merely lip-service.
In 2017 when Pepsi produced the ‘Live for Now’ campaign featuring Kendall Jenner offering a can of Pepsi to riot police during a ‘protest’, the reaction was one of disbelief. The sanitised scene appeared to imitate the Black Lives Matter movement, and while originally planned as the hero spot to a global campaign, the video was pulled after one day – but not before garnering worldwide attention.
Pepsi’s campaign was not only an over-simplification of the very real need to protest in a democratic society, it also tried to capitalise on the current atmosphere of civil unrest, without seeking genuine representation either within the company, or in the campaign.
More recently, Gillette’s 2019 ‘The Best Men Can Be’ campaign hit headlines and divided opinion the world over. While the message that men should set a positive example for the next generation by leaving toxic masculinity in the past was a positive one, commentators questioned whether it was merely jumping on the #MeToo bandwagon.
Nike, on the other hand, writes diversity into its mission statement and has repeatedly pushed the boundaries in advertising. It made global headlines in 2018 when Colin Kaepernick led the 30th anniversary of the brand’s famous ‘Just Do It’ campaign. Kaepernick was the first NFL athlete to take a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, a move that had major repercussions for his career. The campaign hit a different note, and while those in opposition to the protest cut ties with Nike, others praised it for living up to
