The Chicken and the Egg

I will not debate which came first, but it is clear that imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery--whether you are running a beverage campaign or political campaign. Sources like the Associated Press, Conde Nast Portfolio, Advertising Age, The New York Times, and AM NY have debated who’s copying who, but the consensus is universal: there is a striking similarity between President Obama’s “O” and Pepsi’s new logo.

If pundits are correct, Pepsi wants you to associate all the warm and fuzzy feelings you have about Barack Obama with its super sweet, bubbly soft drinks. But just do not accuse Pepsi of copying the Obama “O” logo.

At a press conference held recently to introduce the new marketing campaigns for a number of Pepsi brands, Frank Cooper, the beverage giant's vice president of Portfolio Brands, tried to dispel all the media chatter that Pepsi's new logo, introduced last October, was intentionally intended to evoke the Obama campaign's now-iconic rising sun/open road/American flag motif.

"There's been a lot of discourse about the logo," acknowledged Cooper. "It makes a good news story, but I don't know if it's rooted in reality. Pepsi is a 110-year-old brand. Red, white and blue has been part of the brand for a long time" (so has the American flag).

If you have not seen it yet, Pepsi unveiled a completely new logo, its 10th logo change ever. Pepsi executives have likened the new logo, a circle enclosing curved bands of red, white and blue, to a smile. Bloggers, on the other hand, say it is a rip-off of President Barack Obama's campaign logo. "We're not sure who followed whom," said Cooper, "We're about a smile, not a frontier." In fact, Cooper suggested that maybe it was the Obama campaign who copied the Pepsi logo in their quest to become, (clears throat), the voice of a new generation.

Indeed, the Obama/Pepsi parallels began well before Pepsi rolled out its new logo, and for a long time it seemed to some online bloggists that it was the Senator, not the soft drink, that was cultivating the comparisons. However, by the time of the inauguration, Pepsi was openly trying to capitalize on the Obama phenomenon, with billboards reading "Hope" and the like. Cooper sounded more than a little like Obama on the stump when discussing the Pepsi Optimism Project, and its ongoing consumer attitudes study. "We believe optimism is hope with a plan," he said. "You can’t embrace pessimism. People can go ahead and do that, but we've seen time and time again that that's a bridge leading nowhere." FYI: Cooper is not running for office.

Poor Pepsi, all of this comes a week after Pepsi's biggest rival, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. (not the Democratic Party), announced its new global marketing campaign. The dueling ad campaigns use words like "happiness" and "optimism" to appeal to consumers besieged by financial trouble.

Either way, branding and marketing may have risen to a science, but I will stick to non-carbonated drinks.

--Ron Knoth, Guest Blogger

Comments

[logodesigner]

I think there's no imitation between the logo of Obama and Pepsi logo. Theirs just a certain similarity, but I guess Obama has no intention to imitate the new logo of Pepsi product.