Don Draper would have vanished for a year-long bender if he read this
Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
61–70 of 276 posts
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#62It kind of makes me sad thinking about all the time and talent and money that went into this with the main purpose of getting people to buy and drink more (unhealthy) colored, carbonated, sugar water.
Well, people didn't go for the uncolored version, even with the movie tie-in. So unhealthy colored it is. ;p
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#63New band name: Pepsi gravitational field
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#64Worth mentioning that this is the same design company that blew $35MM on a terrible redesign of Tropicana Orange Juice, which they reverted back within a couple days (but kept the mock orange cap) https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/05/what-to-learn-fro...
The lid really is great. But yeah that's a drastic change (new logo, new typography, new slogan, new image, new lid). They always have to throw the baby with the bath water and be radically modern with every detail.
Reddit's new design went heavy on modern/JS styling and not the raw simple HN-style text-heavy interface. They should have focused on loading the links->comments, pictures, video as quick as possible. They got the comments page to load async but video is broken and RES plugin does inline image/video loading way better. Everything else is a step back or sideways.
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#65When this came out, someone in my dorm made a mock of it on our whiteboard. With a few extra lines, it looks like a fat guy bending over. People always look for a human shape in what they see.
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#66despite how silly this may seem to many in the HN audience, I will contend that: if you were running a multi-billion dollar sugar water company whose main moat is the brand, and spent hundreds of millions on ads each year as one of the key line items in the budget, you too would want this level of sophistication and thought put into a brand refresh. Probably even more. And you can imagine that this document was debat…
LOL, this is not "sophistication", this is bullshit. A million(s?) dollar study for a global brand is justified by things like: * Research to see if the brand logos/names are misunderstood or offensive for a particular market/culture. * Research regarding brand recognition before/after the proposed changes. * A lot of design/thought behind how the brand will look in the many communication channels/products that it ow…
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Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#67I don't think the title prepared me for this. I saw the first page and thought "oh, that's a terrible graphic, why are you moving away from the future". the mona lisa and taijitsu symbol seemed a bit over blown but still sorta grounded. I literally burst out laughing when I saw the contour lines and energy fields. Definitely was not prepared for "Pepsi Universe", either. I assume that by that point in the presentation the energy in the board room must be fever pitch for no one to point out how stupid that looks.
Edit: Upon further reading about the guy who's behind this, Peter Arnell, it turns out he's possibly the harvey weinstein of the marketing business[^1]. It's a huge shame that neither this pseudointellectual bullshit, nor his string of workplace abuses, ruined his career. A consolation is that in 2011 his company got bought out and he got sacked.
[^1]: The Newsweek article is a good read here: https://www.newsweek.com/crazy-genius-brand-guru-peter-arnel.... There's also a Gawker piece that gives a pretty clear idea of how big of a piece of shit this guy is if you can stand the fact that it's Gawker: https://www.gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-a...
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#68I've never seen this before and I feel like I need to know the story. Is this satire or is it real? And if it's real, was it leaked or something? No way Pepsi would willingly share this with the public lol.
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#69[deleted]
Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
#70Worth mentioning that this is the same design company that blew $35MM on a terrible redesign of Tropicana Orange Juice, which they reverted back within a couple days (but kept the mock orange cap) https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/05/what-to-learn-fro...
I see high level design docs like this on occasion. I decided I am not qualified to comment, but my opinion is very polar. Either it is all a very expensive pile of poop or brilliance and design beyond my understanding. When looked upon at a distance I cannot discern which opinion is correct.
It's the first one.
The vast majority of this strategy document is ridiculous drivel, written to sound profound but conveying no meaning. One early tipoff is the nonsensical timeline on page 6 -- it's basically just rattling off random bits of art history with no relation to the brand or the proposed strategy.