The ad above was in a flyer delivered to my house the other day, and it caught my eye. Pepsi has been using its round logo to replace the “O” in a number of words (on posters and ads) for a while now. And, even though I’m no great fan of the new logo (it looks too contrived, and awkward) I like that they’re being clever with it.
But this ad, I thought, was cool on two levels. First of all, they’re redesigning a can, not just a poster or an ad. (They did this at Halloween, too.) And, they’re obviously giving their logo enough credit that it can stand for the brand all on its own (the word “Pepsi” is pretty small).
But secondly, I love how they’ve incorporated the type of product — it’s Team “Can”-ada. Because it’s in a can.
Maybe it’s not the world’s most clever thing. But it’s far more clever than most multi-national corporations will allow themselves to be.
Oh, and thirdly, I think Pepsi’s doing some heavy lifting in the Hockey Canada sponsorship side of things because the Olympics are coming up in Vancouver. The Olympics, as I’m sure you know, have been sponsored exclusively by Coke for at least as long as I’ve been aware of sponsorship. The only more-Olympics-ingrained branding, I think, would be Visa.
(Digression: If I were Visa, I would be doing something to link the multi-national aspect of the Olympics with the travel connotations of the word “visa.” Unless, do they think that visas are a symbol of the paperwork and bureaucracy of travel? I suppose they could do an ad along the lines of: “The Olympic Games. 200 countries, but only one Visa required.”)
Anyway, I did some Googling to see if I could find an online copy of the ad above, but ended up having to scan it.
Speaking of cool Pepsi bottles, anyone remember the bottle with the hole in it, designed during one of the early seasons of The Apprentice?
Now that was a cool bottle! But there must have been problems mass-producing it, because they only made 100 of them.
Grant Hamilton
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Trent