Oh, Pepsi. When will it learn to stop trying to be edgy? Having already demonstrated how bad it can be when brands fail at being woke, the soft drink company's latest gaffe seemed like an attempt to pivot to the opposite extreme, and it didn't go well.
Pepsi apologised and deleted a social media post that appeared to trivialise consent and sexual assault. But the case is so reminiscent of previous PR disasters that it should really never have happened.
Pepsi has apologized for this post.I’m sorry, I’m just not going to buy that Pepsi was posting out rape culture jokes, as some have implied.The “wild” alongside “stops asking permission” clearly implies that their intention was about celebrating rebellion not about… pic.twitter.com/WlrQriMUHxJuly 7, 2026
"Pepsi Wild Cherry is what happens when regular cherry stops asking permission," Pepsi wrote in the offending post on Threads.
Some have defended the comment, arguing that it wasn't intended in a sexual context. Hopefully, it wasn't, but I'd argue that in brand communications, it doesn't matter what Pepsi intended. What matters is what it sounded like and how that made people feel.
It's not the public's job to 'get' what Pepsi meant to say. The message is what the audience interprets it to be, and for many the post seemed to be making a joke about rape. Pepsi's social media team should be savvy enough to be able to identify that potentially harmful double meaning.
The company responded quickly, and its apology was appropriate. “Our recent Wild Cherry post landed in a way we never intended. We hear you, we’re sorry, and the post has been deleted,” Pepsi wrote.
But it was already too late. The post had caused a backlash not only on Threads but also on other platforms where it was being replicated, amplifying the damage.
It's not like there aren't precedents. There have been plenty of high-profile instances where major brands had to apologise and even pull whole campaigns for phrasing or imagery that appeared to make light of sexual consent.
Almost a decade ago, Bud Light pulled its #UpForWhatever beer labels after it was accused of undermining 'no means no' campaigns with a message that read "The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary for the night".
In 2012, Belvedere Vodka had to apologise for a social media post that appeared to show a man grabbing a fleeing woman alongside the caption "Unlike some people, Belvedere always goes down smoothly." More recently, we had Bumble’s anti-celibacy billboards.
In the ephemeral world of social media, many brands are cultivating a more casual, throwaway tone, but there's a fine line between spontaneity and carelessness. Harmful mistakes can happen when social media teams try to sound edgy or play with tropes around breaking the rules, and any wrong move has the potential to cause exponential damage when it can be so quickly replicated.
After Pepsi's cringey Kendall Jenner campaign, perhaps it's time one of the world's biggest food and drink corporations stopped trying to sound like a rebel.
