“If only Daddy would have known about the power of Pepsi.”

This was a tweet by Bernice King, the daughter of the late Martin Luther King Jr., in response to a commercial promoting Pepsi as a solution to anti-black police brutality. The commercial showed a generic protest that ended with Kendall Jenner handing a Pepsi to a police officer. Within hours, there were calls for a boycott of Pepsi products. As a result, the commercial was taken down and the company issued a formal apology. While Pepsi is the most notable example of faulty corporate activism as of late, they’re not the only company to use social justice to sell more than equality.

A month earlier, Nike revealed that they were releasing a line of athletic hijabs, their first foray into modest sportswear for Muslim women. This action was widely applauded by numerous media outlets and viewed as an act in defiance of Islamophobia worldwide. Many saw this move as a glowing example of corporate activism.

Though the business decisions of Pepsi and Nike seem unrelated, they’re both examples of corporate activism gone awry. Pepsi tried to piggyback on the popularity of social activism among young adults, while Nike waited to make this decision until the potential benefits outweighed the costs. Now that catering to the needs of Muslim consumers is more socially acceptable, Nike can increase profits while marketing itself as “woke.” This is crucial at a time when consumers expect companies to do more than just provide a product – they also expect companies to be socially conscious. It’s important to situate marketing disasters such as the infamous Pepsi commercial within the larger context of corporations coopting social movements for profit.