We’re in the greatest financial crisis of recent times. The mightiest of multinational organisations and global financial institutions are crumbling and falling. The rest of the business world is watching nervously and cutting back on things like overpriced gimmicky marketing campaigns. Right?
Not for Pepsi. The soft drinks giant are reported to have spent an incredible $10 million for their new logo design. Yes, you heard me right. It’s part of a wider $1.2 billion campaign to revamp their entire product range’s images.For that kind of money you’d expect a logo that makes you go “wow, I really want a Pepsi right now”, right? Think again. Want my opinion? I hate the new pepsi logo. As a recent LA Times article put it, it looks like a fake foreign knockoff of Pepsi. For a start the typography is just a recycled version of an old Diet Pepsi logo from the 80s. Then we come to the motif of the logo. It hasn’t changed much! And it’s hardly taken the design world by storm. In the words of design critic and editor of Before & After magazine John McWade, the new Pepsi logo is “static, empty and vaguely bland”. Let’s take a look see and try and find out what they spent all this money on for their logo?
The new logo has been created by the design and branding agency based in New York Arnell. Not long ago on web 2.0 news site Reddit, someone leaked a PDF doc made my Arnell which was used to explain the concept behind the logo to Pepsi. Entitled “Breathtaking design strategy”, the document is a masterclass in marketing BS. The document claims the new logo was inspired by major art such as the Mona Lisa and the architecture of the Parthenon. Then it tries to compare the contours within the new Pepsi logo with the paths of the gravitational fields of the planet! There’s even a bit where it talks about “The Gravitational Pull of Pepsi” in the shopping aisle.
Now that I’ve read this outrageous PDF, I get how it all worked. Pepsi came to this hotshot design agency and asked for a new custom logo design. The agency directors immediately saw dollar signs in their eyes. First they got one of their graphic designers to throw together a few rough sketches and sample logos which eventually became Pepsi’s simple new logo redesign. Now in my book that coudn’t have taken more than a few days to complete. But they could hardly charge Pepsi $10 million for two circles with a little wavy line, could they? So they instructed their staff to create out of thin air the most wild, far fetched and egotistical rationale for the design during the rest of the allocated time. They cranked up the BS machine to the ‘it’s gonna blow!’ mark to show how this new logo is linked to THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR AND THE TIMELESS FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE. Now THAT’s worth ten million dollars! If only I could have sneaked into the meeting room when that was being presented. You got ripped off, Pepsi!
