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Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]

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

#111

despite 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…

Metrics to drive up numbers are the way forward. You need to test theories and prove them with data and experiments. THIS is what is expected in a report; and I see nothing I expect in this report. Everything you see here is NOT sophistication. It has no science it's just an illusion. The use of geometry and technical jargon gives the illusion of legitimacy however this stuff is no more legit then the word 'science'…

Maybe this is a generational thing, but the idea of not knowing what you’ll get in a box of chocolate is an entirely foreign notion to me.

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

#112

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...

Wait so this was real?

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

#113

I am surprised at how most of the comments here are -- I am guessing -- deeply misunderstanding the document. The document is almost unbelievably over-the-top. I think that it must be an intentional parody of marketing-speak. If you think that it's not, can you offer any evidence in support of your view?

It's 100% real and 100% serious. That's why it is so well known in the design world.

I wonder if your comment exemplifies some corollary to Poe's Law - that someone mistaking real for parody or vice versa will confidently assert their view as obviously correct and challenge others (even if they constitute a seemingly informed majority) to justify their own.

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

#115

Watching mad men for the first time right now, and I feel it. Pepsi universe is going to be the name of my next vaporwave album

A follow-up to the Negativland classic Dispepsi [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispepsi

Woah. This is exactly the type of sampling I've been looking for. This is amazing. Thank you.

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

#116

I 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 presentatio…

>Once he freaked out in a meeting because a CD did not work in the CD player, so he took the CD out and smashed it in to pieces on the conference room table. The IT guy , who was standing behind him, ended up going to the hospital because the shards from the CD flew into his eyes

Did the author of this article ever try breaking a CD? They don't shatter like that and the shards certainly aren't gonna fly far enough to hit the guy behind you. I guess this is what happens when you report exclusively on gossip.

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

#118

despite 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…

Here’s how I believe it works:

1. A link is posted to HN whose content can easily be made fun of, because it appears bizarre without context.

2. People on HN jump at the opportunity to make fun of said link so they have something to take a dump on. It’s a wonderful ego-trip. They cannot get enough of it. Most of those who do not need the ego-trip to feel better about themselves usually move along without comment.

3. Comments like yours which are trying to be curious instead of mocking are “raining on their party”, i.e., ruining their ego-trip.

4. Instead of engaging with you on a level of thoughtful discussion, i.e., “let’s explore why such a bizarre document exists instead of just mocking it because there is nothing to be gained by doing that”, such commenters are more than happy to take a dump on your comment too.

Instead of engaging with your comment in its entirety, they will nit pick on the fact that your comment features the word “sophisticated” and base their entire response on that. Anything to keep the ego-trip and judgement going.

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

#119
The diagram of the Pepsi bottles (p7) reminds me of the classic computer art from 1968: "Running Cola is Africa", which interpolated between a runner, a cola bottle, and Africa. It was implemented in FORTRAN running on an IBM 7090 mainframe, and printed on a plotter. Maybe a bit tangential, but I've always thought it was an interesting piece of art. Kind of trivial now, but innovative 55 years ago for its use of interpolation to warp images.

https://zkm.de/en/artwork/running-cola-is-africa

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