Pepsi - WTF?

With all the political nonsense going on around here lately, I thought it might be time to return to a subject I might actually know a thing or two about - Branding.

The Die LIne has some interesting new shots of a redesign for Pepsi. And when I say interesting, I mean that in the same polite way you tell your neighbor their new haircut is "interesting". I'm honestly not sure what to think of this. Traditionally, I have always felt that pepsi packaging (as well as soft drink packaging as a whole) is a little overly-designed to appeal to the graphic-hungry tween market that we've all come to loathe as the tastemakers of the day. I've always just chalked this up to another corporate consumer giant treating design as cake decoration in order to entice the more persuadable side of our culture to embrace a certain beverage as part of their identity (there are Coke drinkers, there are Pepsi drinkers, and there are Mountain Dew drinkers). As different demographics as Democrats and Republicans, the brand loyalty left in the wake of the great soda battles continues to offer choices to consumers on who and what exactly they wish to align themselves with. Based on that philosophy, a design that begins to unite pepsi brands under a similar aesthetic, one that is based in pseudo modernist design, simplicity in color and graphic application, and a refreshed logo would be something that I SHOULD be interested in. I'm not. In fact, the new Pepsi identity seems to me to be a bit misguided.



The design begins with an over-haul of the traditional pepsi logo. If the efforts of Futurebrand for UPS have taught us anything, it's to be incredibly careful when fucking with tradition. For a company so deeply rooted in its own graphic history, I am truly surprised that such a radical change was even considered, let alone accepted.





The packaging - while making an attempt to streamline and modernize - ends up looking like a cheap imitation of itself. The type selections are very "art school project" at best, and don't really attempt at all to pay any homage to pepsi's tradition, but instead seem a vein attempt to cast off Pepsi into a "new generation" (remember that?) with utter disregard for the brand's past. Also, why all the anomalies? If you really wanted to take all the pepsi packaging into a new direction, why not maintain some sort of a system? At least then you could blame the blandness of the whole thing on some sort of obsessive systematic application. No. Why is the sierra mist type blurry? Why is Mtn Dew all of a sudden afraid of vowels? What the fuck? Why do I care?

Wait, now that's a good question.

In the traditional "Soda Wars", I've always been on the Pepsi side of the fence. It's a lame and arbitrary thing to do - consider yourself defined in some small way by a product you consume. But unlike clothing or cars, it would be hard to find anyone who believes that somehow by drinking a certain sort of soda pop you define yourself as being any sort of tastemaker or really make any difference anywhere other than that particular soda manufacturer's bottom line. A bottle of Mtn Dew is not exactly going to give you the same sort of consumption inner goodie points that a Hermes bag or a new Bugatti might. Surely we can't say that a soda drinker's brand loyalty lies in an attempt to broadcast one's consumer savviness. Instead, it is one of those everyday products we seldom think about, like razors, bread, or toothpaste.So why then do we have such a connection with certain brands when there's very little image at stake? For me personally, I identify myself as a "Pepsi person" for one reason.

When I was young, my parents were not exactly rich. To save some money I was often left at my grandparents for baby-sitting. It should be explained here that my grandparents on my mother's side lived on a small farm outside of Marion, Iowa. It was beautiful. As a child I would run and play with the dogs, go visit the rabbits and chickens kept out back in the coup. I would "help" my grandfather tend his gardens and feed the cattle. This was a formative time in my childhood, and taught me many things about the relationship between man and food. Food came from the ground in the form of vegetables, it came from animals who had to be killed for nutrition to be attained. Life had to be interrupted, yet constantly maintained in order for us to survive. When the winter started to rear its ugly head, I would help my grandma can the fruits of their labor to save for the winter. There were few things that my grandparents consumed that were not made on the farm. They were of frugal means, saved all they earned, and for most of their lives after "retirement" (farmers never really retire), they continued to live off of that savings. One of the few things that found its way into my grandfather's refrigerator every week was a case of glass bottles filled with Pepsi.



I can still remember the feel of the cold bottle in my hands. The way that the glass around the bottom where the bottles rubbed up against the wooden and steel case would be engraved slightly, leaving a smooth yet sandy texture. I can recall the hard lines on my grandpa's tanned face, undoubtedly formed from years of looking into the harsh sun, as sure as the blue overalls and work shirt he wore for 50+ years. For some reason, I've never tasted anything quite as sweet as a nice cold pepsi from a glass bottle after "a hard days work" (in reality, I was very young and did very little of anything that could be qualified as work, but that never stopped my grandpa from making me feel like I was a vital piece of the process whenever I was there). So there we would be, my grandfather and I, sitting out back of the barn looking over the garden and the cattle, sharing a pepsi over the setting sun while waiting for my grandmother to call us in for dinner. In an essence, that's what the branding for Pepsi has always meant to me. This is the heart of a product's branding, and what can be possible through the loyalty of years and consistency, and simultaneously where this new identity fails. To throw that all way for the sake of modernism and a loosely implied system is not only irresponsible, but could potentially be devastating to the future of the brand. For your sake, pepsi, I hope you know what you're doing.