Kendall Jenner: Is she 'complicit' or not in Pepsi ad fiasco?

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this story misspelled a man's last name: It is Eric Schiffer, of Reputation Management Consultants. 

Is Kendall Jenner to blame, even a little bit, for participating in a widely mocked and subsequently dumped Pepsi ad? PepsiCo apologized to her for "putting her in this position," but...well, why? Did Pepsi make her do it?

Did the 21-year-old hot-model-of-the-moment not know that Pepsi's marketing and advertising honchos conceived an ad that would rip off imagery from Black Lives Matter protests and position guileless Kendall as soothing race relations with a can of soda?

Didn't she or her powerfully eagle-eyed mother and manager, Kris Jenner, see the storyboards before she agreed to the gig?

The Jenners have gone to ground, so they were not available to comment on the fiasco and the extent to which either Kendall or Kris was involved in the creation of the ad or its production.

But experts in reputation and branding management are skeptical that the super-famous, super-savvy Jenner-Kardashian clan would not have known the details of what they were getting their second-youngest member into.

"Generally speaking, the bigger the celebrity, the more they have the ability to say no to things," says Gil Eyal, CEO and founder of marketing firm HYPR, who has worked with hundreds of celebrities and brands, including Pepsi (but not the Kardashians).

Some hot celebrities, with huge millennial social-media audiences (Kendall has 78 million on Instagram) coveted by brands, have wide creative control, while smaller celebs have almost no say, Eyal says. "(Major celebrities) have publicists and attorneys who will vet things and if there's anything they don't like, they can veto it."

Ordinary models might show up for the shoot and just do what they're told. Not the Kardashians, who are "extremely sophisticated" when it comes to managing their brand and media, says Eric Schiffer, CEO of Reputation Management Consultants who describes himself as a strategic adviser to A-list stars in Hollywood and has known Kris Jenner and her ex-husband, Bruce Jenner, since their kids were young.

"There are photo boards of all these commercials, so they know exactly what’s going to happen," says Schiffer. "They did not enter into this in naïve fashion, it was a giant miscalculation that reared its ugly soda head on the Kardashians...This is a case when content slapped them in the face."

Even though the Kardashians generally live by the motto that there's no such thing as bad publicity, they may not want this kind of klunky image, says Schiffer.

Kendall Jenner can soothe the uproar by getting more involved in public affairs, in the organizations upset with the ad, and with well-regarded charities, he says.

"This is going to be OK, she’s going to make it through this, because the global entertainment consumer has a terrible memory whenever a 'scandalopera' happens," Schiffer says. "In six months to a year, the sentiment can be shifted, and they will find a way to make that happen."

Erik Bernstein, vice president of Bernstein Crisis Managementsays he believes Kendall Jenner had no involvement in the conceiving and production of the ad. "But there's also no way that her own PR team did not know the whole content before she went to the shoot" in Thailand.

But he agrees Jenner likely won't be damaged. "The rules are just so different for celebrities, and her audience is a bunch of kids, anyone from age 12 to early 30s," Bernstein says. "Her most rabid fans do not care about her behavior."

Eric Dezenhall, a veteran crisis manager in Washington, says young celebs especially are so used to being praised for whatever they do, they don’t always think through things.

"In all likelihood Jenner thought this would be a warm and fuzzy spot with a politically correct message so no one on her team could necessarily envision the blowback," he says. "Her job was to show up and look good and she did that. Given that the Jenner brand is visibility and that it’s not tied to much beyond that I don’t think this is a serious setback."

One lesson of this episode for celebrities, Bernstein says, is: Live by social media, die by social media.

"Social media lets it all happen so much faster," Bernstein says. "People who are outraged can figure out quickly that other people are outraged, too; before they had to actually go and talk to somebody . Now you can search Kendall Jenner and Pepsi and see that 20,000 people are talking about it so everything is amplified in real time."

His advice to celebs: "Consider how anything can be misinterpreted. Other people are not the same as you; consider putting yourself in other people’s shoes."

If it's any consolation to celebrities, this is only the latest in a long line of episodes in which celebs have been accused of appropriating someone else's culture: Last month, Karlie Kloss apologized for appearing in Vogue dressed as a Japanese geisha. And last fall, fashion designer Marc Jacobs was criticized for dressing his models, including Kendall's younger sister, Kylie Jenner, in rainbow-colored faux dreadlocks wigs.

Even earlier, in July 2015, Kylie was criticized for posting pictures of herself on Instagram wearing braided cornrows in her hair. Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg was among those who called her out for "appropriating black features and culture" but failing to use her position to help black Americans. As recently as January, Kylie's Instagram still showed pictures of her with braided hair.