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Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

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Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#71

Post by pjbeam »

dmix wrote: post #64
ianseyer wrote: post #42

Worth 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. The…

Tangentially Reddit seems determined to make me stop visiting it. When they finally kill old. I won't anymore. The new reddit mobile web experience is incoherent, I get that they're pushing the app but no thanks.

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#73

Post by autoexec »

bitexploder wrote: post #58
ianseyer wrote: post #42

Worth 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.

As far as I can tell marketing is a very expensive pile of poop used to dress up some uncomfortable underlying truths about very real and unfortunate vulnerabilities we have as humans. It's also one of the few places where artists can reliably make money.

The result is that a lot of creative and talented people are putting out some beautiful, powerful, and entertaining works which are ultimately used to lie and to psychologically manipulate the masses in order to shape their views and extract money from them.

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#74

Post by mc32 »

ianseyer wrote: post #42

Worth 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 don’t know how management allowed them to kill the metaphor of the straw tapping an orange. It’s a good metaphor for the product's “fresh” marketing message (putting aside the “flavor packets” thing.

The one thing I think the new design had right was the lighter green for the type. That’s about it.

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#75

Post by spython »

pjbeam wrote: post #71
dmix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The…

Tangentially Reddit seems determined to make me stop visiting it. When they finally kill old. I won't anymore. The new reddit mobile web experience is incoherent, I get that they're pushing the app but no thanks.

I see it is a feature – the mobile web experience is just bad enough to not get sucked in too much.

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#76

Post by autoexec »

duskwuff wrote: post #70
bitexploder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm guessing the guy who made this spent years working for an art degree, getting shackled with decades of debt in the process, only to find that it's nearly impossible to get work as an artist doing anything meaningful so he had to get a shitty 9-5 at a marketing firm and while his dreams of being a true artist have been crushed years ago he just wanted to do something with even just a little of what he learned while studying what he loved.

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#77

Post by hammerbrostime »

bitexploder wrote: post #58
ianseyer wrote: post #42

Worth 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.

This Pepsi redesign is just particularly (spectacularly) bad. There are plenty of brand briefs which are intelligent, strategic and grounded in reality.

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#78

Post by swyx »

shoo wrote: post #45

PepsiCo Inc (PEP, Nasdaq) isn't merely a beverage company - as explained in this strategy document - it is a space company. The Pepsi Universe, with respect to its 8 light year characteristic length, reflects the scale of the total addressable market (TAM) that PepsiCo can expand into. Noted short-seller and equity valuation skeptic Jim Chanos once described the TAM of space companies as infinite, because space itsel…

i'd like to have whatever the author of this document is having

Re: Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

#80

Post by silisili »

niscocity35 wrote: post #11
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

I see bullshit jobs existed in 2008 also. "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."

This is the most elaborate form of BS i have seen to date. My only take away from this post is that I like the 1962 skeuomorphic Pepsi logo with the bottlecap.

Agreed. Really dig the 1929 and 1962 logos. It seems to just keep going downhill from there.
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