Brad Jakeman signed on as president of global enjoyment and chief creative officer of Pepsi last year and was tasked with developing the identity of Pepsi’s biggest drink brands.
First, he had to figure out what exactly makes the Pepsi brand different from eternal enemy Coca-Cola. It took a while — nine months to be exact — but he and his crew finally came to a conclusion, reports Natalie Zmuda in a feature on Pepsi’s Beverage Lab at AdAge.
Look at what they went through, according to AdAge:
“For nine months, a core team of Pepsi execs, including Messrs. Jakeman and Lowden, scoured the globe for inspiration, looked to the past for insights and sought to understand what precisely made Pepsi different from Coke. There were exhaustive focus groups, in-home ethnographies, quantitative and qualitative studies, and cultural immersions in markets as diverse as Argentina, Australia, United Arab Emirates and Russia.”
What did they come up with after all that effort? “Coke is timeless. Pepsi is timely.” Essentially, Coke represents permanent happiness while Pepsi embraces excitement.
It just goes to show how much effort big brands put into their research. Pepsi used all that research to develop its simple new tagline, “Live for Now.”
How it will move the market segments will be interesting to watch. Does anyone care, as much as the execs do, is a question yet to be answered.
Mike Jaycock 