Graduation Year

2021

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Media Studies

Reader 1

Jennifer Friedlander

Reader 2

Wendy Cheng

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

A global fashion brand talking about global unity, an athletic retail brand tackling racial inequality, and a beverage company portraying protests. These industries and ideas share little in common, but in the broad socio-political climate amid the omnipresent political divide following the 2016 election, commercial brands have relied increasingly on corporate advertising to engage politically activated Gen-Z consumers (Hessikiel). As a generation that has been characterized by strong engagement with social justice movements, an aversion to traditional advertising, and even capitalism at large, corporations have certainly identified messages of social justice to not only target the Gen-Z consumer segment, but also reimagine corporate brands as “woke” brands, or brands conscious of social issues (Hessikiel). To investigate the representation of racial justice in corporate advertising, I will consider corresponding producer discourses as well as wider critical discourses surrounding selected campaigns. By assessing Benetton’s “All the Colors of the World” campaign (1986) as an early example of this phenomenon, I will analyze PepsiCo’s “Live for Now” campaign starring Kendall Jenner (2017) and Nike’s “Dream Crazy” campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick (2018) as current examples of corporations using advertising to leverage racial justice movements to manage brand awareness among younger, more politically activated consumers. Through the analysis of these three campaigns in dialogue with theoretical frameworks and corresponding media discourses, I provide insight into how they failed to create advertising campaigns that meaningfully engage with such movements. Through the analysis of these three campaigns and their shortcomings, I will provide insight into whether corporate advertising is a productive form of allyship.

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