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.

Pepsi and Targeting Influentials

Fizz Buzz

Recently, Pepsi launched an aggressive (I mean that in a good way), targeted campaign in support of the launch of their new logo design. You can find out about that at The Pepsi Cooler. As part of the campaign they sent materials and information to 25 influential marketing bloggers (thanks to Don Grothoff and Darryl Parker for the continuing detective work).

There’s been a lot of chatter in the online marketing community about the cans, and the campaign.  Pepsi certainly did a good job targeting influencers – Chris Brogan, Greg Verdino, PSFK, C.C. Chapman and Rohit Bhargava all received goodies. From there, people like Rob Walker picked up the story.  So, mission accomplished from this aspect: Many of the most important, most influential, thinkers from the marketing world are talking about Pepsi and their new brand identity. And now I’m talking about it, so it has really trickled down to the bottom of the marketing food chain.

But I wonder, did Pepsi target consumer advocates in addition to targeting marketing influentials?  I don’t know the answer to this, they very well may have, or may be planning to do so in a second wave. But I think it’s important to look at the distinction between the two groups.

Influential marketers will talk about the brand and debate the merits of the new logo. Some will like it, others will be critical. But I wonder what the objective of this tactic is? Let’s say all 25 marketing bloggers love the new branding. What does that translate to? Better sales? Awareness of the new logo? Not sure.  I’d imagine that most of these bloggers will move on pretty quickly and not linger on this topic for too long.

Now compare that with what might have happened had (or when) Pepsi targets brands advocates, and surely there are plenty of bloggers out there – sports bloggers, political bloggers, pet blogggers – who love Pepsi.  What if they had been given a sneak peek at the new logo, or been made part of the process. They’d be talking about Pepsi for months, and as self-described fans of Pepsi it would more than likely be very positive.

The people at Pepsi are pretty smart, so I’ll keep my eye on this, I imagine they have more tricks up their sleeve as the roll out continues.

 

Full disclosure: My agency, Taylor, has been involved with the Coke Zero brand. I have not been involved with those accounts.