Individual Case Analysis

Individual Case Analysis

Introduction & Problem Identification

On April 24, 2013, one of the world biggest beverage companies PepsiCo released a controversial online commercial to advertise their one of the Billion-Dollar brand Mountain Dew, which is a flavored carbonated beverage. This online advertisement portrayed a female victim of violence in the police station to identify a goat that attacked her from a lineup of all black man. After the company published the commercial, lots of people confused who attacked the women. The advertisement followed a criticism started by Dr. Boyce Watkins, a professor at Syracuse University, who believed that this commercial is full of discrimination and propagate violence. During the increase in opposing voices, the Mountain Dew brand also got affected considerably to a very large extent. Actually, the negative impact of commercial or the unsuccessful attempt is just symptom of this case. To be more specific, the reasons of these bad feedbacks are not just a marketing strategy itself. Therefore, the introduction and the problem identification certainly highlight the features of PepsiCo advertisement that faced the criticism of racial discrimination.

The core issue is the PepsiCo or the Mountain Dew, who had a marketing department that lacked careful strategy for their advertising campaign. The advertisement failed to address the customer requirements and the marketing department failed to predict the audience responses. Furthermore, the Mountain Dew did not balance the punch line and business ethics. Firstly, the problem in this advertisement is that it failed to send the message to their audiences. The main goal of commercial is to market products to target audience, a group of people that a company wants to sell its products. Basically, the advertisement should not confuse the audience; the massage from the commercial should be clear and accurate. Though in this case, this advertisement confused audience; before the professor criticized this commercial, lots of people did not even know who attacked the woman. This response shows that the commercial was not properly understood by the audience.

Secondly, the marketing department did not predict the responses of commercial accurately. The market department of the company should examine their advertisement before publishing it. Through predicting responses from the audience, the marketing department should know the possible feedbacks. As a multibillion dollar company, Mountain Dew must have awareness of the products that it sells to different areas and difference races. It is a vital step to carefully exam the advertisement and avoids misunderstanding for performing a significant task. However, in this advertisement, a line up full of the black man and violence towards women may indicate black men are all criminal and women are potential victims of violence. Those scenes may cause misunderstanding, and the marketing department did not find the problem. Finally, the marketing department of Mountain Dew did not balance initiative advertisement and the business ethics. Business ethics is the moral principles that need to be followed by the company. The company need punch line in its commercial, but still need to consider the business ...