By Kaelyn DiGiamarino “So we should just give Putin & Assad & Trump a can of Pepsi & everything will be fine?” This Tweet serves as just one example of a fearless consumer who was unafraid to express his sarcastic discontent with a brand. Consumers understand when a brand’s image does not match the values set forth and as a result, are left confused and disappointed in the company. Crises in corporations largely affect consumers’ trust in the organization, and thus their loyalty to the brand itself. In early April, PepsiCo released a two-minute commercial spot featuring Kendall Jenner. It sparked immediate controversy because it appeared that the company was belittling the United States’ political differences. Pepsi pulled its commercial from YouTube within 24 hours of being published. The commercial begins with snapshots of a violinist, a photographer, and a crowd of protesters. Each character is frustrated, and ultimately joins together in the protest. The camera then reveals Kendall in the midst of a photo shoot, intently modeling and unfazed by the protesters passing by. It is not until the violinist walks by and nods his head to her that she decides to dismiss the photoshoot to join the march. The commercial shifts to a celebratory mood as Kendall immerses herself into the crowd and hands a Pepsi to a police officer, thus resolving the unspecified conflict. Criticism of the Pepsi commercial was wide-reaching, with an overall consumer opinion that it was tone-deaf, belittling, and ignorant. The commercial brought to the screen complex issues such as police brutality, LGBTQ+ rights, and ethnic, religious, and foreign community coexistence with an air of simplicity. Similar to how one can extend an olive branch as a symbol of peace, the Pepsi can passed from the hands of Kendall Jenner to the police officer initiated reconciliation between the parties. In that way, it appeared that Pepsi was offering its product as a quick fix to American differences. The Pepsi beverage has few distinguishable attributes from its cola competitors. Thus, its consumers’ purchasing behaviors are highly dependent on them choosing to identify with the Pepsi brand more than they identify with the competitor’s brand. As a brand, Pepsi tends to follow culture rather than lead it. Rather than curate content that becomes the reason people begin buzzing about a topic, Pepsi synthesizes preexisting pop culture icons into its content. Pepsi cast Kendall Jenner as the celebrity protagonist for its commercial. However, it is not the appearance of Kendall Jenner that brought criticism, but rather the appearance of a celebrity figure. The commercial addresses current political topics relevant to average American citizens. To convey a message that appeals to the average citizen, there needs to be an average person cast as the protagonist. Pepsi’s commercial portrays an image of a misrepresented population looking for their voices to be heard through protest. Adding a celebrity to the cast created a disconnect because Kendall Jenner is not underprivileged, and the resulting dissonance left consumers confused about the PepsiCo brand and decreased, rather than increased, brand identity and trust. This sense of tunnel vision resulted in the creation of content that produced intense backlash. Marketing Week conducted a poll of marketing professionals and found that 42% of marketers feel that their company brands fail to reflect a contemporary, racially-diverse, society in their marketing and advertising. This inability to produce culturally sensitive content could be a result of the disconnect between desired brand identity, and actual brand reputation. Pepsi missed the mark because it failed in seeing how its consumers actually perceived its brand.
2 Comments
By Sean Lange Have the United States’ most powerful e-commerce site and the world’s most profitable physical retailer strayed from the sales strategies that they symbolize?
In July 2017, Amazon announced that it would be purchasing Whole Foods Market, the 431-store supermarket chain with the widest offering of organic groceries in the nation, for $13.7 billion. Previously, the company’s most popular services are delivered digitally, to much acclaim. In addition to its eponymous, all-encompassing “e-tail” site, Amazon streams original entertainment content via Amazon Studios, licenses data collection, analysis, and Cloud storage software through Amazon Web Services, and home-delivers groceries and meal kits to AmazonFresh subscribers. In the fall of 2016, Walmart spent $3.3 billion to purchase the Hoboken, NJ-based Jet.com, a phenom website for selling consumer goods and food supplies. Walmart, with over 11,500 brick-and-mortar locations worldwide, is the largest retailer and employer in the world, and topped the Fortune 500 rankings in 2016 with $486 billion in revenue. It also held 25% of the U.S. grocery market during that year. At the end of 2017, Amazon and Walmart are now suddenly the two most rapidly growing, disruptive companies in the United States, and have achieved that status by recognizing the supply chain benefits conferred by both physical and online destinations. With their respective expansions in retailing kitchen staples serving as a parable, Amazon and Walmart are sustaining their core competencies -- Amazon’s leading $138 billion in online revenue, and Walmart’s unmatched 11,000 global stores -- while pursuing a hybrid “clicks-and-mortar” strategy. The opportunity for the two dimensions of retail to complement each other was laid out on Black Friday 2017. On the most celebrated day of the year for physical retailers, the overall single-day U.S. sales record was shattered at over $3.05 billion. Amazon accounted for 50% of the $1.2 billion of that goal grossed in mobile transactions; while Walmart reported only a 1.6% decline in in-store foot traffic year-over-year, hardly cataclysmic in the context of the boom in online deals now offered on the same day. Such multi-dimensional consumerism is an important aspect of how both Amazon and Walmart have embraced their counterintuitive delves into brick-and-mortar sales and e-commerce sales, respectively. In November 2017, Amazon reported that all Whole Foods locations had been equipped with kiosks for the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, home speakers which recommend Amazon-exclusive goods for 17% of all merchandise inquiries. For Amazon, Whole Foods is now a quintessential part of its supply chain, allowing customers to more frequently order and be delivered Amazon products. For Walmart, the e-commerce venture initiated by Jet.com enabled the epitome of its strategy towards differentiation. While traditionally known to serve low-income buyers in physical stores, Walmart announced in October 2017 that it would be partnering with Lord & Taylor, to exclusively sell the high-end apparel on its e-commerce website. Amazon and Walmart both have a clear mission in mind. Either retailer today defines success as becoming the global leader in overall sales, or being the automatic destination that every consumer will go to, any time, to buy any product. For Walmart, accomplishing this status means preserving its “everyday low prices” and family friendly image in its physical stores, while quickly and carefully developing its online platforms. For Amazon, world domination entails continuing its pattern of skyrocketing digital growth -- with sales expected to increase around 30% each year -- while transforming tactical brick-and-mortar outlets into influential components of its data-driven supply chain. This click-and-mortar formula has high potential for catalyzing growth in Walmart and Amazon -- and has prompted steps upward for the two iconic retailers, not to the side. By Kim Tang In early October, Dove released a three-second body wash ad showing a black woman changing her brown-colored shirt and “transforming” into a beige-shirted white woman. Although the next frame showed the white woman changing into an Asian woman, the company was slammed for the racial insensitivity in the first transition. Previously, Pepsi’s ad featuring Kendall Jenner was also a hot-button topic this past April. People were upset and frustrated at Pepsi’s shortsightedness with respect to the complex issues of police brutality and injustice. Dove is known to be a progressive brand that has succeeded in the past with socially diverse and empowering advertisements; so the fact that the company can widely “miss the mark” on what appears an obvious infraction is startling at the very least. However, while it is meaningful to highlight diversity in all forms of marketing, diversity in marketing shouldn’t just be celebrated for diversity’s sake. Rather, companies should first be promoting the inclusion of race, gender, and ethnicity within their own corporate cultures and employee constitutions. Striving to have a more inclusive workforce can help companies promote the ideals they set out to achieve, recognize obvious offenses in their advertising content, and consistently create genuine messages. With this in mind, it may be worthwhile to examine the corporate makeup of PepsiCo and Unilever (Dove’s parent company), using their 2016 annual reports. PepsiCo’s diversity statistics, per their 2016 annual report, were:
Comparatively, Unilever’s diversity statistics as of 2016 were:
Beyond statistics, the differences among the language used in each report underscore each company’s degree of emphasis. A quick keyword search in PepsiCo’s report shows that “diversity” appears three times; the same search in Unilever’s report yields twelve results, four times PepsiCo’s mark. Furthermore, Unilever’s discussion of diversity goes beyond just stating that they strive for it, and provides in-depth explanations and information about the steps the company is taking to be more diverse. It also includes a hyperlink to their Board Diversity policy. Significant stakeholder diversity is a reason why Dove may have succeeded with its past campaigns, which have focused on body positivity, diversity, and inspiring confidence in women. Comparatively, PepsiCo, while not entirely lacking diversity, does not seem to have the related initiative as a core component of its culture. Therefore, the oversight with the Kendall Jenner commercial appears less of an outlier. It is possible to create content without having a diverse staff, but the chances of these advertisements overlooking obvious infractions could be significantly higher. Proactive companies may have the more diverse opinions and viewpoints needed to be able to properly execute their advertisements. The process by which advertisements are created, critiqued, and released to the public is unclear, since in retrospect many of them feature underlying, and often blatant, racist and sexist content. Most likely, these oversights are a combination of lack of social awareness within the company, and a review panel for ads commissioned from outside agencies that lacks in race, gender, and political diversity. In any scenario, time could also be an issue. One thing that is important to remember is that companies can, and do, make mistakes. In today’s age where it is easy to get swept up in a mob mentality and echo chambers of social media, taking a step back is important. For instance, the Dove advertisement did have a third and final woman involved; and did not just depict a black woman being “cleansed” and becoming white-skinned. Yet, a common reaction was that there were only the first two women in the ad. Perspective and fact-checking is critical, especially in a time where information can be easily manipulated and spread, even if it is false. A week later, the actress in Dove’s ad even came out and stated that she felt that she is “not a victim” in this controversy. Did Dove fall below the equality standard it strives to achieve? Most likely, yes. This ad was not intentionally malicious, but nonetheless, the anger and disappointment from people are justified. But does this advertisement negate the other positive impact or diverse initiatives the company has been known for? The answer will vary depending on whom you ask; but ultimately, when deciding whether or not a brand is still worth loyalty and purchasing, it is important to consider not just one advertisement a company releases, but its entire corporate culture and brand history. Digging a little deeper before coming to a decision provides a clearer consumer perspective, and beyond that, provides for a more informed customer and citizen. By Sean Lange When Major League Baseball, its journalists, and hotel operations converge on a night in late January, it’s the culmination of a spring, summer, and fall worth of action — travel carousels, airline schedules, and lodge bookings — that never makes it to the ballpark, to the press box, or beyond the revolving doors of the Marriotts, Sheratons, and Hiltons in Miami, San Francisco, or Houston. It’s also the inaugural ceremony for a class bound for permanent enshrinement in a bucolic town, rather than a few-night stay in a buzzing city. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America, which awards the MLB’s major accolades for every season and votes on the new Hall of Fame classes, has held a black-tie banquet each January since 1923 to honor the chosen Cy Youngs, MVPs, Rookies of the Year, Managers of the Year, and to be the first celebration of the incoming members of Cooperstown. Ken Swarthout is the hospitality professional that serves as the director for the dinner, which has been held in the ballroom of Manhattan’s Midtown Hilton since the 1990s. At the onset, his job fittingly resembles stadium operations: assembling a roster of available players, contacting agents, publishing programs, running box office sales, and employing security. His next duties more closely mimic the gala disposition, and include ordering tuxedos and limousines, deciding guest seating, and approving the menu and assortments of beverages, and commissioning trophies and plaques. Throughout, Swarthout has the unique responsibility of tailoring the dinner experience to the profile and preferences of each MLB award winner, as well as of the past All-Stars that the BBWAA invites to the event to present the awards. Invitees from the past three years include names like Clayton Kershaw, Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Tony LaRussa, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays. Dinner guests have been able to mingle with New York greats like Jacob deGrom and Ron Darling, Don Mattingly and Mariano Rivera. Swarthout’s standing gives him insight into the private interests of these baseball legends, and this facet of his job is enviable: die-hard fans covet any opportunity to feel closer to their favorite players — a pursuit that precipitates human relations challenges. A crowd of enterprising sports collectors from the general public patrols the Hilton lobby for before and after the dinner, awaiting the appearance of baseball personalities with black pens, pristine baseballs, and hotel stationery. As the dinner’s promoter and the MLB’s ambassador, the director must keep both the public and the players equally satisfied. However, there have been recent public relations circumstances that were completely out of the dinner director’s control. The 2017 dinner fell on the day after President Trump’s inauguration; and the ensuing Women’s March in Manhattan on that Saturday afternoon poured 400,000 demonstrators down 42nd Street, which the NYPD had blocked off from vehicle access. The protest passed in proximity to the Hilton, with the rerouted traffic holding guests up, Swarthout had to delay the dinner for nearly three hours. Ironically, this scenario inspired some déjà vu: it was the second straight year where attendees on the day of the dinner could have walked flush in the middle of Midtown’s avenues, without care of being hit by a car or taxi cab. In 2016, a record-setting, 27-inch blizzard prevented guests staying even blocks away from the Hilton, like Hall of Fame-inducted catcher Mike Piazza, from trudging the snow-entombed sidewalks, and made hosting the dinner both a practical and political impossibility. “Basically, the Mayor of New York made the decision for us because he literally closed the city down,” explained Swarthout. “So neither the security, the waiters, nor anyone else could make it in.” By noon, ticket holders in-transit and guests aground at the Midtown were notified that the 2016 BBWAA Dinner had been cancelled. Nonetheless, a salvage effort came together when MLB Network discovered that one of their camera crewmen had made it on-site. “It was just a fluke that we decided to put it on in a smaller version to be televised,” Swarthout admitted. But more significantly, the substitute ceremony inspired an innovation for the dinner. “It really looked fine when they televised it, so we did that again this year, and we had like a mini version for [MLB Network] to provide an hourly broadcast show.” Baseball fans nationwide were offered a glimpse of the dinner proceedings, and the production received popular reviews. Undoubtedly, the BBWAA Awards Dinner has a propensity for socializing people from all realms of baseball. Swarthout, however, did acknowledge that this quality has evolved perceptibly over the decades. “In years gone-by with the Bob Feller’s, the Robin Roberts’s, and the Duke Snider’s, and the Pee Wee Reese’s, and the Stan Musial’s, you got to know them, you talked to them. It was a little different.” He noted that the award recipients today balance their workout schedules, interfacing with their agents, and paying more attention to their phones and social media accounts when they attend the dinner. More than ever, this leaves it up to Swarthout and the journalists to furnish the event with the reverent tone and historical minutiae that’s beloved in baseball. Among the most iconic of the dinner’s annual treasures is the Scorebook. Serving as both the evening’s program and the de facto yearbook for New York City baseball, the Scorebook features interviews with current players and executives, special articles from baseball columnists, promotions for NYC sports bars and youth athletic charities, stats of past award winners, and eulogies for recently passed-on legends. Each edition of the souvenir is emblazoned with a signature cover from Gotham Baseball magazine illustrator John Pennisi, whose 2016 design memorialized Yogi Berra and 2017 caricature celebrated the Cubs’ World Series championship. Many fans cherish baseball for this retrospection; but in reality, such romanticism is only part of what makes the National Pastime great. In 2017, the MLB flaunts a bevy of immensely talented players younger than 25 years old, a list that includes MVP shoo-ins like Jose Altuve, Mookie Betts, and Kris Bryant, without exiting the top of the alphabet. This winter, Altuve will be honored as the American League MVP from the World Series champion Houston Astros, returning to the Hilton for the dinner on January 27th, 2018. New York sports fan should mark down the date. The ceremony will be the first MLB-sanctioned event that unites Yankees’ Rookie of the Year Aaron Judge and National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton, whom the Yankees acquired in December from the Miami Marlins. Swarthout and the dinner staff will be prepared: at this point, it will be just another year with a storm coming to New York. By Jared Kofsky A new six-story apartment building will come to Jersey City and Newark could get a new 240-room hotel, while a South American country is donating an island it owns in south Jersey to the state government. Newark and Jersey City are continuing to see new businesses opening and new buildings being constructed, while an island in Camden County that is owned by a foreign government’s oil company will soon be open regularly to the public. Here are those stories and more in The Bull Bear & Lion’s latest roundup of business news in the Garden State, as initially reported on JerseyDigs.com. --- We now know more about what a Manhattan developer is planning to bring to the site of a Northern New Jersey baseball stadium. Lotus Equity Group purchased the former Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium property in Downtown Newark for $23.5 million last year from the Essex County Improvement Authority with the goal of developing a new neighborhood on the property. Legal notices that were released at the end of November reveal that Lotus is planning for the upcoming project to include 2,526 residential units, 48 live/work units, a hotel with 240 rooms, retail space covering 102,144 square feet, a performance space, office and commercial space spanning 2,216,820 square feet, and 2,923 parking spaces to accompany the existing Essex County Improvement Authority parking garage. The development would be constructed in partnership with the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, Michael Green Architecture, TEN Arquitectos, and Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners. If approved by the Newark Central Planning Board, Lotus would also seek to develop part of the former Lincoln Hotel property just across the street from the stadium. Another Manhattan company is also preparing to develop in this region of the state. Titanium Realty Group is teaming up with WDesignè, River Drive Companies, and LWDMR Architects in order to construct a six-story all-residential development at 75-81 Jordan Avenue in Jersey City’s McGinley Square neighborhood. According to Titanium's founder and CEO Diego Hodara, 35 different studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units will be available inside the building when it is completed. Fifteen parking spaces will also be included in the development, as will be a rooftop deck. Demolition is underway now to remove the existing three-family residential building and automotive garage that have stood on the premises for decades; according to Hodara, construction on the new building is expected to last 18 months. A few blocks away from Jordan Avenue, two neighborhood residents are in the process of opening a new café and ice cream shop called Crema. Federico Rodriguez and his wife Michele Boas will open the business in the brownstone at 695 Bergen Avenue in the space that had been occupied by Harry Street Coffee until that shop suddenly closed its doors over the summer. According to Rodriguez, seeing Harry Street Coffee close motivated him to bring a venue back to McGinley Square where neighborhood residents can gather and artists could display their work He wanted to focus on ice cream, in addition to coffee, because this part of the city does not have any independent ice cream parlors. That will no longer be the case when Crema opens in January, introducing 20 'high-end' flavors with it. Ninety miles to the southwest, plans are moving forward to convert an island that sits in the middle of the Delaware River between Camden County and Philadelphia into a public park and nature preserve. Petty’s Island in Pennsauken Township is currently owned by the Venezuelan government’s Citgo Petroleum Corporation since it had previously operated an oil terminal on the premises. However, Citgo is in the process of tearing down its remaining oil tanks on the property, and the Crowley Maritime Corporation terminal on the island will be permanently closed, effective January 1, 2018. In 2020, ownership of Petty's Island will officially be transferred to the State of New Jersey, and the New Jersey Natural Lands Trust will open a visitor and cultural center with views of Center City Philadelphia, along with hiking trails and other amenities, to the public. Currently, Citgo has partnered with New Jersey Audubon to offer tours of the island, which are free and open to the public, though advance registration is required. By Vivian Louie Today, technology and fashion have evolved from what they had been in the past decade. The upcoming generation of fashion lovers has a unique voice that demands many more different styles. With the growing dominance of online shopping, people have stopped visiting department stores in malls to buy their denim jeans and cotton sweaters. The hassle of waiting on long lines to ultimately find the item out of stock in-store doesn’t have to be dealt with when searching for the desired product on the retailer’s website and buying it there. As a result, the difference between shopping virtually and in store comes down to one key factor: convenience. With technology and fashion becoming a potent duo, many retailers are seeing that brick-and-mortar storefronts are not as popular as they once were. Many past mall anchors like Macy’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Payless Shoes are closing stores across the country due to lack of business. Some stores like Aeropostale, Delia’s, Wet Seal, and Aerosoles have already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016, and have shuttered numerous outlets in hopes of reconstructing their balance sheets for higher future earnings. So who is to be blamed for the “retail apocalypse” that has been occurring around the world and dramatically in the United States, the consumers or the retailers themselves? The answer is both. Customers are the sources of sales for retailers to stay profitable and commercially worthwhile. But a shopper will refuse to even step into the store to browse the clothes if they don’t match their tastes or budget. That trend is what is crushing businesses like JC Penney, Sears, or Kmart, which have failed to appeal to the style of the younger generations. Conversely, businesses like H&M and Forever21 have succeeded in capturing the hearts of this generation through their weekly updated offerings of new fashions. If other apparel retailers cannot design clothes to keep up with the flippant tastes of this market, they will not succeed in maintaining a powerful brand name or increasing their revenue. “As you know, in fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out,” is the renowned phrase that Heidi Klum repeats on the show Project Runway; and it definitely encapsulates the current “retail apocalypse.” The customer always knows best, which is why retailers have to make strategic changes now in order to avoid closing their doors in this competitive market. |