Todd Grossman, CEO, Americas TalkwalkerWhen Pepsi decided to air an ad that focused on what appeared to be protests like those that have taken place nationwide over the past year, but solved all problems with a soda from a celebrity, the company clearly didn’t anticipate the amount of backlash that it would incur.The now deleted commercial featuring Kendall Jenner connected Pepsi with words like Syria, WWIII and boycott in social media – probably not the plan that ad executives had in mind.  Pepsi even earned a spot in a scathing Saturday Night Live skit this weekend.According to international social media analytics firm Talkwalker, there have been more than 2.7 million mentions of Pepsi in social media in the past week.While the top social post was Jenner’s own promoting the ad (which she has since deleted) with more than 2.5 million likes, today’s trending posts are using hashtags like #PepsiGate, #BoycottPepsi and #PepsiLivesMatter and look more like this Tweet.

https://twitter.com/BlessedZvy/status/849714793510514688

The politically-charged ad attracted both sides of the spectrum, with discussion focused on the irony that the ad received more attention than the horrific gas attacks in Syria.

https://twitter.com/OsasCruz/status/849559419222413312

Additionally, a number of posts parody the ad with the news of the day, with the name Trump trending because it is mentioned in connection with Pepsi more than 77,000 times.

https://twitter.com/erwoti/status/850168285278720000

But nothing may be more powerful than this tweet from Bernice King, youngest daughter of Martin Luther King.

https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/849656699464056832

Every company can learn something from this situation.

• Seek an outside perspective. Companies can become insular, and what might seem brilliant to your in-house team won't resonate with the public. If your campaign or idea is risky, it's worth a discussion with an outside agency or consultant to make sure there aren't any problems with your messaging.
• Pause before sending. Your tweets and posts will live forever and become part of your brand's identity. Make sure you are putting the best image of the company forward.
• Beware the backlash. Offhand remarks or jokes can go viral and have unintended consequences. Think through every interpretation of your message before you hit send.
• Accept responsibility and move on. When faced with a communications crisis, determine your messaging and response across your company, and move on as soon as possible. Memories can be short, so it's best to keep moving forward.

 [author]About the Author: Todd Grossman is CEO, Americas at Talkwalker (www.talkwalker.com), one of the world’s leading social data intelligence companies. Its cutting edge technology provides actionable social media insights through real-time social listening and advanced social media analytics. Talkwalker helps marketers to prove the value of their social efforts and significantly enhances the speed and accuracy of business decision-making. Talkwalker’s state of the art social intelligence platform monitors and analyzes online conversations on social networks, news websites, blogs, forums and more, in over 187 languages. Its 1500 servers process posts from 150 million websites every day. Talkwalker’s unique social intelligence software was selected to become a Twitter Official Partner in 2014. E: t.grossman@talkwalker.com,T: https://twitter.com/ToddMGrossman, L: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddmarcgrossman/ [/author]