Fail Pepsi · 2017
Pepsi hands a can to a riot line
What happened
A 2.5-minute film had Kendall Jenner leave a photoshoot, join a vague protest march and defuse the standoff by handing a police officer a Pepsi. It ran for about 24 hours before Pepsi pulled it and apologised.
What went wrong
The imagery quoted the 2016 photograph of Ieshia Evans facing riot police in Baton Rouge, from protests over police killings of Black Americans. Reducing that to a soft-drink handshake read as trivialising the thing it was borrowing from.
The rule
Protest and civil-rights imagery is not a mood board. If the reference is recognisable, the audience will judge you against the real event.
Takeaway
Ask who was actually in the photograph you are re-staging, and whether they would recognise themselves in your version.