On Monday this week Kendall Jenner broke the internet by simply stepping into a Manhattan convenience store and purchasing a can of coke.
Dressed in a tight orange Bec & Bridge dress, earrings and white strappy heeled sandals, Kendall stepped out holding a can of Coca-Cola’s newly-released Orange Vanilla Coke. Due to the extreme colour coordination with her outfit and the can’s packaging, the internet began to speculate that this stunt was part of a paid advertising scheme.
Diet Prada, a celebrity fashion instagram account with over 1.4 million followers, was one of the first to question whether Jenner’s ultra-glam curbside photoshoot was more than just a colour-coordinated convenience. Rather, they questioned it as an attempt to bypass the USA Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Social Media Disclosure Policies.
These guidelines state that influencers “should clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationship to brands when promoting or endorsing products through social media”. These posts must also be accompanied with a #ad or #sponsored hashtag in the first three lines of the post’s description.
Diet Prada said, “# Ad? Short-lived Pepsi spokesmodel @kendalljenner made a glamorous bodega run in NYC yesterday to grab a can of Coke. It wasn’t just any Coke though… The most recently launched Orange Vanilla flavor she chose happened to be just a couple Pantone shades away from perfectly matching her dress. Surely enough, images of her with the beverage were soon splashed over the web. Was this color harmony a coincidence or have Jenner and Coca-Cola been scheming to skirt around the FTC’s social media advertising guidelines?”.
The model herself posted some images from the outing on her Instagram, however, without a caption or compulsory FTC hashtags.
However, after much speculation, Coca-Cola stated that the incident was in no way paid or endorsed by the company.
“Kendall Jenner is not paid by Coca-Cola and this was not a paid placement. There is nothing better than drinking an ice-cold Coke in the summer and clearly Kendall agrees!” a Coca-Cola spokeswoman told Refinery29.
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