I’m on phone watch hoping Karl-Johan Persson, the CEO and president of Hennes & Mauritz, aka H&M, stops monkeying around and dials me up so we can discuss their ridiculous Monkey hoodie and subsequent lame apology. Maybe before I rant and rave and tell you how a simple pre-release phone call to the Media Guy can save companies millions of dollars, perhaps I should show you the source of my consternation:

H&M: What were you thinking?

Uhhhhhhh…I’d be speechless in this case, but, you know, I’m never speechless.

In previous columns, I have expressed empathy for the CEOs of these organizations for not calling because I felt people in the marketing and advertising department would lose their jobs. But in reality, nothing happens. They just go about their days and weeks issuing lame apologies and react to the situation they caused, rather than respond to them.

In case you missed it, the term “monkey” has been used as a racial slur toward African-Americans. Just look at the picture above. In the ad, the African-American is a “monkey” and the Caucasian kid is a “survival expert.” Ugh!

The “monkey” sweatshirt fiasco is yet another miserable reminder of how much more work lies ahead when it comes educating corporations about the consequences of using certain images and messaging. The Swedish clothing giant is learning that lesson firsthand.

A barrage of comments ensued, including multi-platinum recording artist The Weeknd who ended his partnership with H&M:

It didn’t end there. A barrage of comments ensued, with celebs from Questlove and Snoop Dogg to LeBron James and Diddy raucously protesting (and, in some cases, redesigning) the tone-deaf ad via Twitter and Instagram. H&M also lost rapper G-Eazy who also terminated his agreement in advance of the March 1 launch of his H&M collection.

In true cover your ass mode, H&M released a statement saying it had withdrawn the hoodie from sale and would “thoroughly investigate” to make sure there is not a repeat of the incident.

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I’m waiting by the phone hoping Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, dials my ten digits so we can discuss their latest Kendall Jenner spot. I mean, I feel for Indra Nooyi because how many people at Pepsi are going to get fired? I say this is because I can’t remember the last time a big corporation with deep pockets making this kind of advertising mistake. Before I get going on another media rant, take a look at the ad…

Isn’t it lovely how the cola giant joined the fray in capitalizing on a Trump America where big business appropriates real feelings and related imagery from serious protests to sell product? All the while, corporations are minimizing the danger protesters encounter and the frustrations that inevitably get pushed within.

In a bit of Hollywood fantasy, the ad’s climactic scene shows a police officer accepting a can of Pepsi from Kendall Jenner, setting off riotous approval from the protesters and an appreciative grin from the officer. This is precisely the opposite of real-world experiences of protesting police brutality. Who knew police officers just needed a Pepsi to stop beating and shooting civilians?

Back to the rant…

…it’s bad enough to have an ad that people don’t care about, but what you cannot do with your media buy is produce a national spot attached to your product that people despise. You just can’t do it and I am shocked that this even made it to air because it had to go through so many approval cycles jsut to get produced. This isn’t one person’s decision, there are executives after executive weighing in. A production team, writing staff, and more.

So we’ve arrived in 2017 in an interesting place where Steve Harvey messed up the Miss Universe announcement…when the Oscars get botched by Faye Dunaway (yes her and NOT Warren Beaty)…when Mariah Carey can get furious while lip-syncing onstage on New Year’s Eve…that truly bad publicity is good publicity. We’ve arrived in a place where you get more attention by botching things to the point where you might think that some people might actually do things badly for the extra publicity.

But this mindset can’t be what Pepsi was going for with the Jenner spot. My guess is that if you asked Pepsi, “would you like to go back and do it over again?” that they would jump on the opportunity. They are just too big to make such a colossal blunder. You never want this hatred anywhere near your marketing and advertising.

Lady on the left: “Hey, Kendall, why are you pawning your wig off to me?”

Maybe they were looking for genius to be assigned to them for this campaign, simply on the merits that nearly all of their ads work. There was no genius in this work and no brilliant strategy that this would get people talking and thus help the brand. I’m finding it difficult to believe that after all of the pop star ads and not-so-subtle shade at Coca-Cola that Pepsi wants to be edgy.

Alternative thinking was that Pepsi was jumping on board with the notion of being socially responsible would give them a leg up. Oh goodness no!

This is why you do focus groups and you send the spot to the team for a looksee and enable your staff to have a voice. The hope is that someone, anyone would speak up. Maybe someone spoke up and maybe they didn’t.

C’mon Indra, one call to the Media Guy—before you spent millions on a campaign like this.—could have solved all of your issues. A simple review of your story boards or creative brief by your new Commissioner of Common Sense (that’s me) would have saved all that embarrassment. My moderate salary or retainer fee would have already paid for itself.

A Pepsi Google search looks something like this…

A bit of advice…the ONE THING you cannot do with your advertising is offend the public at large. If you’re working in your our creative vacuum or within a creative team and I ask, “what’s the worst case scenario on our ad and how people react?”…what’s the response?

The worst case scenario is definitely “offending the viewers” and staining the brand with offensive publicity. You want people to like your product. You don’t want them talking about how another Jenner/Kardashian is jinxing your brand. These are same people who pixelate logos and brands out of their television shows.

So here we have Kendall Jenner catwalking down the street from Privilege Island to sell some cola while sashaying through real protests is at the height of misconceived notions. Staggering in its stupidity if you will.

With this in mind I feel sorry for the people who will be fired because today people are talking about Pepsi, only to laugh at it.

So Indra, one final time, please, for the sake of your brand: call me back. You’ll be happy you did.

UPDATE – April 5, 2017:

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Okay, so where am I?

I’m waiting by the phone hoping Gail J. McGovern, President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross, rings me back so we can discuss their outreach advertising. Their swimming pool safety poster channeled their inner Trump nearly alienating African-Americans across the United States. They picked a helluva a spot to showcase who’s cool and who’s not cool. I mean swimming pools in this country long been the hub of racism—take a read of the Washington Post’s article detailing why “America’s swimming pools have a long, sad, racist history.”

When I was a first-time parent, I remember reading a psychology article chronicling a series of books and educational materials that described good behavior with the pronoun “he,” while bad behavior was written with a “she.” Subtlety showing that females were the originators of poor actions and nor males. This poster applied that psychological manipulation to the graphics.

The Red Cross poster shows nearly every child doing something “not cool” as black, while the others who are “cool” are not. To further break it down, four out of the seven of the black children are shown as breaking the rules, while only two of the 10 non-black children are seen breaking the rules. The only depictions of “cool” behavior are from caucasian kids.

Ugh, American Red Cross! What were you thinking?!

The poster went viral when John Sawyer posted the image on Twitter, calling it “super racist” and implored the Red Cross to send a new one to The Salida Pool and Recreation Department in Colorado.

The pile-on was, of course, substantial and filled with sarcasm and frustration:

The American Red Cross responded to the masses with mea culpa stating they were creating new poster and removing the material for their site.

“We deeply apologize for any misunderstanding, as it was absolutely not our intent to offend anyone,” the organization said in a statement.

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