The Pepsi-Jenner disaster: Translation and collaboration in global image markets

Abstract

In 2017, Pepsi released a video advertisement online that became an international pop reference for ignorance regarding race relations and police brutality. This video offers a rare but theoretically productive moment to examine the errors and interpretive disjunctures that characterize the global labour market in advertising. More videos are being outsourced offshore due to decreasing budgets for video production internationally. Although the international provenance of creative advertising videos is well hidden, their nonscalability produces a trail of strange images that can provoke unexpected responses.