Pepsi Branding: Confusion or Strategy?

Much has been made of PepsiCo’s branding remakes this year. The Tropicana orange juice rebrand was widely panned, forcing the brand to go reverse course and go back to what didn’t seem to be broken after sales plunged. Along with consumers, designers weren’t crazy about it either.

The Gatorade rebranding (to G) seems to have received mixed reviews. Personally I think it’s ok, but there are now so many variants of G that it’s hard to know which one to drink when. When, exactly, am I supposed to drink Be Tough and when am I supposed to drink Shine On? At this point, they are all interchangeable to me so I just buy whatever’s on sale.

Any then of course, there is the mothership: Pepsi. While it has always played second fiddle to Coca-Cola, both cultural and via sales, there is no denying it is an iconic American brand. I’m not really a cola drinker, so I’ve always viewed the “cola wars” as a detached observer.  But what Coke has done well is maintain brand consistency. That script font, contour bottle and dynamic ribbon are as famous as the secret formula.

The Pepsi redesign has been well documented (and the redesign documents have been well documented). Ok, so you decide to make a change. Not my choice, but fine, that’s your call. But what I can’t figure out is this: Right now if you are out looking for a Pepsi, you may find one that looks like this:

That's the new Pepsi logo, you know, the one that looks like Obama's logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or like this:

The Pepsi logo we all know and love

Or this one:

Wait, what?

Yep, just a couple of months after launching a new logo, now I hear radio commercials for Pepsi Throwback. The ads are read by a voice actor do an imitation of Wolfman Jack. Ask most people what Pepsi’s most famous tagline is (and most likely the one they still remember) and they’ll say, “The choice of a new generation.” That was a great tagline and represented the highpoint of Pepsi’s marketing when they were taking to Coke with their taste tests. But who is Pepsi Throwback targeted at? I turn 39 this week and Wolfman Jack is a little before my time.

 

They have a TV spot as well with a Barry White/Isaac Hayes-type voice over:

Maybe I’m in the minority, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. Is the idea to have so many Pepsi logos out there that you just flood the marketplace? Are they slicing and dicing consumer segments? I think the best brands, Nike, Apple, McDonalds and yes, Coca-Cola, remain remarkably consistent.

It’s tempting to change your logo, but remember it’s likely that you’re getting bored with it a lot quicker than your consumers are.

NOTE OF DISCLOSURE: My agency, Taylor, does work for some Coca-Cola brands, though these are not accounts that I work on directly.

“These brands belong to the consumers who love them everyday”

The quote in this post title is not from some Social Media Expert, or branding consultant. It’s from Katie Bayne, Coca-Cola North America’s Chief Marketing Officer, and it’s from a new Microsoft ad:

Can you imagine the CMO of Coca-Cola, say 30 years ago, making that statement? How about the CMO from 10 years ago? Five?

It’s a great quote and an interesting new campaign from Microsoft.  If you believe, as Ms. Bayne believes, that the brand belongs to the consumers, then your job as a marketer changes dramatically. Is getting endcap space in the super market really your top priority?  Is deciding if the offer in your FSI needs to be a $1 off or a buy two, get one free, really a critical decision?

Or is understanding that your consumers want to drop Mentos in your 2 liter bottles and videotape the results (and post them on YouTube) the most important thing you can know? With the change in the relationship between brand and consumer comes a change in the skills needed in the C-Suite.

UPDATE 1/20/09: Rob Walker of Murketing/Buying In/Consumed fame sends this along:

“The reality is that the American consumer owns Coca-Cola.” — Robert Goizueta, 1988

Curse you Walker, with your ‘facts’ and your ‘research’. Actually, thank you for passing that along. Certainly others before Bayne understood the emerging consumer-brand dynamic.