A corporation is its image. When a company decides to change its logo, its changing how the world perceives it’s brand image. Pepsi, with its new redesigned logo, has stripped itself of an identity all-together and replaced it with a “smile”. This smile defines nothing about the strength of the brand but rather hitches a ride on the look whats new train. Every bottle of Pepsi has a different logo, with a varying white portion depending on the strength of “pepsiness” in the bottle, which will only lead consumers to have to decide why one brand has three different logo’s.

The argument of “if its not broke don’t fix it” could definitely work here but I won’t go there. This 21 year stretch from the last corporate re-design Pepsi undertook was the longest in the company’s history. Pepsi had, on average, changed its image ever 12 years so this change is one that is long overdue. The simple fact is that after 6 months and $1 million dollars later, the Arnell group, Pepsi’s new agency, should have been thinking a little more forward not so much backward.

I’ll skip over the obvious references to the fact that the creative director at Arnell stole this font from an old Diet Pepsi t-shirt or that Pepsi decided that people still don’t know how to pronounce thier name and decided to keep the name of their drink stapled to side of their logo like a dangling baby fetus.

To identify and share your brand with consumers on a level that Pepsi competes at you have to have a staple, be something comfortable that consumers can understand and relate with, and something that a consumer wants to have in their fridge, cooler and in their hand while enjoying their favorite activity. Coca-Cola continues to dominate Pepsi due to the fact that they understand that selling a “coke” isn’t just selling a beverage, it’s selling a feeling of comfort. Something that having some multi-million dollar TV ad where Madonna lights off fireworks while 50 cent does burnouts in a Ferrari does not. That kind of effort renews brand image in  your consumer eyes momentarily and might drive some short term sales but it doesn’t re-kindle any sort of love affair your consumers have with your brand.

All you need for that is a bright red background with a familiar calligraphic logo.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.