Pepsi’s refreshing while Coca-Cola is moving forward

Posted at January 2, 2009 // Advertising, Promotion, Public relations, Strategy / Tactics

Happy New Year.

For 2009, the first branding stories probably surround the coke industry. The story emerged a few weeks ago, when Coca-Cola revealed its plan to install a green billboard at Times Square to be revealed on New Years Eve. Pepsi, at the same time would be launching the new logo (with a roll out that started early in December).

The two accompanying marketing campaigns would be much different. Coca-Cola would focus on being green and its strong recycling efforts, while Pepsi would focus on being joyful and young.

Pepsi’s campaign seems to be more of the same. Moreover, without a strong message, in times where marketing clutter is just getting worse, I wonder if Pepsi would be able to break through and reach its audience. While there are a lot of eyeball, and probably the right eyeballs, but I wonder if that eyeball would find the message.

Pepsi had always been young, which I found interesting that it considers such branding effort to be a repositioning. While this is the most significant logo change since 1962, I have yet to find the underlying difference between the new and the old brand identity.

I think in contrast, Coca-Cola’s campaign will in the long run push the brand forward. Coca-Cola has increasing become the world’s coke. Its Olympics effort was excellent, and the greening effort now would only further push Coca-Cola’s imagine to be an excellent world citizen. This, along with its already established product excellence, would probably put Coca-Cola ahead of the game.

It’d be interesting to see the sales of the two coke giants in 2009 and evaluate the ROI in the two campaigns.

Here is an interesting link to an interview with Pepsi’s North America VP discussing the relaunch: link.

Here is the ad launching Pepsi’s new logo on New Years Eve:

From Crackle: Pepsi New Year’s Eve spot

Tags : Advertising, Promotion, Public relations