What is Pepsi thinking?

Pepsi has announced that they are undergoing a drastic relaunching of their branding and packaging
to bring "new life" to their flagship brands. The most dramatic
element is a redesign of the Pepsi Globe logo, which for some reason is
now supposed to represent a smile.

"Pepsi’s Chief Marketing Officer Dave Burwick
set the tone for the change at a meeting of Pepsi bottlers when he said
“If we don’t change quickly, we run the risk of being a footnote to
history,” according to Beverage Digest.



PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer Indra Nooyi told BD she didn’t expect
the changes to immediately stop the decline of Pepsi CSDs in the face
of a difficult economy, but she expects the initiative to slow the
decline until it eventually flattens out.



BD also reported that the changes generally excited bottlers, and that
Frank Cooper, vice president of sparkling brands, promised to help
bottlers convert their fleet to display the new Pepsi Imagery, which is
due to hit the market late this year or in early 2009." via BevNet

What are they thinking? Seriously, this is a big step backwards in my opinion. With the change to the classic Pepsi globle logo, it looks like a cheap knockoff brand. I don't get it, just how is this supposed to increase or even sustain sales in a dwindling economy? Your thoughts?

Comments

[Ivan]

You can't judge decisions made by managers from design point of view :) Those are two different worlds.

Probably this shows how bad really are things with Pepsi.

(Though I love the Mist can.)

[Heather]

oh my. You are right, the new pepsi logo just looks like a knock off. The 'misty' sierra mist, really? and wow, 'mtn dew'. not good, any of them.

[BitterLIx]

Ouch! That hurt.

[Haley]

The Pepsi logo looks like some sort of Target-brand knockoff trying way too hard to look trendy.

"Mtn Dew" is the most tool-ish thing I've ever heard--and I really don't understand why you would want to mess up your product's name like that on the packaging. Don't you want it to remain memorable and stay in people's minds?

And the Sierra Mist can is clever in theory, but just makes me feel like I'm going blind. Not comfortable to look at.

[Hugh G.]

I'm shocked at how bad these are! They look like generic store brand bottles!

Their art director and CMO need to be sacked, pronto. Unless of course, this was designed by committee.

[Juan Pablo]

They became crazy!“If we don’t change quickly, we run the risk of being a footnote to history”

Is this what they need to survive?

[Aaron]

While I hate the wordmark, I must admit that I find the new logo to be pretty clever. You really need to see it in context: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max bottles, sitting together on a self, look pretty nice.

There's no excuse for the Mountain Dew bottle, though.

[Kristopher]

Feels a little bit like it was inspired by "Obama"

[Matt]

It does look like a cheap knock off of their own product! They might as well change the names too. Pupsi, Mt. Moisture, Sierra Fog.The only saving grace about this lineup so far is the nice tree element on the Sierra Mist can. However, as BitterLlx stated the mist effect of "Misty" is too generic to save a nice background.Bummer.

[Gregg]

Can you say New Coke Recipe?

As a staunch Pepsi disciple, I will NOT put my lips to this. I'm all for change but this looks like Indra Nooyi went to the graphic design 101 class, down at the local junior college, and asked them to summit designs. I love you Pepsi, but I ain't drinkin' this cool-aid!!

Varicose veins in my Sierra Mist? No thanks!

[Don Guss]

It looks like first round concepts and someone of power said "these look great, let's do it".Probably left a bunch of people in the room stretching their collective heads.

Bad moves all around, but to change your global mark is wildly short sighted.

[Alejandro]

I don't get why the white space between red and blue in the circle mark is thicker in regular pepsi than it is in diet pepsi, does anyone know?

[cheekymonkey]

What we have here is a perfect example of terrific thinking executed extremely poorly. The idea of going simple bold & iconic with the globe was inspired. We'd all be raving about this if it was the classic "old" globe up there sitting alone in deep blue space like some kind of holy union between Apple & Pepsi.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why they'd go with multiple new (really bad) versions. Hello?, consistency in branding anyone? This is the very antithesis to the work done by Turner Duckworth on Coke. By all means distill your brand down to its simplest, purest expression but do it with taste and elegance.

Without exception the new logotypes are weak (wow, they gaussian blurred some Helvetica - that will print just great on a can). As for "MTN" DEW? - LMAO. Sorry but this looks like student work.

Their new 20oz bottle is totally phallic too. Seriously, my girlfriend (a non designer) laughed when she saw it "it looks like a wrinkled d__k!). Take a look at this doozie: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/pepsi_new_bottles.php

Who is going to 'fess up to this travesty? Come on... we'll understand.

[Jeffrey Matt]

The thing that I can't quite get is that the Pepsi and Diet Pepsi marks appear to be quite different. Can't figure out why they'd do that. (Diet Pepsi's just not as happy?)

Overall, poor redesign.

[Michelle Rollins]

The smile is one from the side of the mouth... like a used car sales man would have. This is attempted brand update was done in haste without really vetting the change through. I wonder consumer testing was done. With Coke, taking a much more organic, artist, yet calculated approach how could this attempt of modernism, simple, clean design compete. If it is clean it still need to look appealing.

The logo falls flat and looks like a bad vector mistake in retro spec. Either Pepsi is trying to pull a "New Coke" move and garner consumer outrage... not likely to happen or this was done in bad taste.

[kao]

I do like the new typeface, but not in this context; it really just doesn't feel right on a pepsi can. The asymmetry of the new Pepsi ball is really unpleasant, and -- did I miss something? -- why does it differ from the bottle of regular pepsi to the diet pepsi? Screwing with a globally known logo at all seems terrifically stupid to me, let alone treating it as a flexible entity that changes from product to product. But I guess they must surely have their reasons...

"Mtn Dew" is simply irredeemable, though, no matter what. Ew. All the huge corporations recently trying to hop on the vwl htr bndwgn don't seem to realize we grew tired of that a long time ago, at a far more grassroots level, with the first couple thousand amateur Knockoffr web 2.0 sites that came along. Bleh.

[Andre]

This makes me so sad... You see, I love Pepsi. I like Coke too, but prefer Pepsi. Well, I always thought that Pepsi old logo never looked like a drink´s logo. That globe and the stiff type gave it a somehow corporate look, very unlike Coke. With this new logo and packaging Pepsi goes even deeper into that. It just doesn´t look like something you wanna drink! It is clean and aestheticaly pleasant, but it doesn´t fit. I think the best logo Pepsi ever had was the 1940 version (which was very similar to coke, but still...). A few years ago I heard something about Pepsi developing something called "the blue project". They suposely wanted to eliminate all red from their logo and packaging. Maybe that was a better path to follow. Anyway, this new identity is something that will either go very right or very wrong. Let´s wait and see.

[Ross]

On the pepsi can it doesn't look so bad, hell I could even grow to like it.

But the bottles? Jesus christ that's horrendous! The designer and person who made the decision to go with these need to be shot.

And MTN DEW?! Jesus christ whats next, an ice cold can of LOL?

[Justin]

my grandpa and dad both worked for pepsi, i've been a pepsi drinker all my life...

with that said, this new design is terrible. who are these re-designs trying to target?

like kristopher said, the new logo reminds me of the obama logo. i'm wondering if that's intentional...

mtn dew, disgusting logo. i liked the designer bottles they have in stores, much more appealing to who they're trying to target.

if anything, this change will make them a footnote

[Gearbox]

I believe the difference between Regular and Diet logos lies in the diet. If you drink Diet Pepsi, your smile looks thin, if you drink Max Pepsi, well...Actually...I don't think anyone would drink Max Pepsi, at least not in that context: "anyone in for fat in a can?"

Maybe I'm wrong. Hopefully I'm wrong.

[Aaron]

If these are the final designs as they will ship, the bottom line is that the new logo treatments simply do not "do" anything for the identity of the company or the product itself.

There is no real differentiation here from other products in the market and the logo seems unfinished and lacks the energy that Pepsi so obviously wants to inject into their image.

I agree that the logotype is weak, the nicest thing happening is the lowercase "e" in the word Pepsi. I would push more in that direction because it is the only thing that interests me at this point.

To be fair, we are all comparing this new version of the logo to the old one which we have grown very accustomed to over the years. If we had never seen a Pepsi logo before and this was the first time we saw it, we might not find it appealing but we would probably not have such an averse reaction.

That said, the examples above do seem like unfinished comps and may not represent the final product. Hopefully this is still a work in progress.

[kds]

Cans are great, 2 liters are bad. Everyone I've talked to agrees.

[Andre]

Hey folks, I think we should all develop our own ideas for Pepsi and show them here in the Dieline! Just as an exercise. What do you think? We can do better than this.

[Julie]

The mist is hypnotizing. Other than that, bleech.

[Barkley Anderson]

There are hints of good design in this but overall the execution seems very reactionary and amateuristic.

I've always held the opinion that packaging design didnt have a great impact on established brands. Coke, Nike and other color outside the lines all the time.

But they extend and vamp on their iconic graphic language, they dont flush it down the toilet. Nike doesnt throw in some floral swirls to give the swoosh some more "UMPH"

Brands take decades to build, and one hideously bad executive decision to destroy.