Search results matching tag 'pepsi'

14-m-dump-bin-pepsi.gif

917682 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:22:00 GMT

Coca-Cola runs a dump bin for its World Cup tickets promotion.

My first encounter with a planner

1762305 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:44:00 GMT

My first encounter with a planner was at BMP in the seventies. I’d just come back from New York, and they didn’t have planners there. Over there the creatives had to do the thinking for themselves.

So I’d never met a planner before. The first one I met (like every single planner I’ve ever met since) had a university degree.
He also had a beard. And glasses, roll neck jumper, corduroy trousers, and Earth Shoes (the seventies version of Birkenstocks).

In fact the whole university, intellectual look at that time. Anyway, we were working on Pepsi. The target market was 13 year old kids, and they were trying to find out more about them. So I sat behind a two-way mirror and watched this guy run the group.

They were a scruffy little bunch of 13 year olds from Poplar. The planner pointed to a large board with the names of lots of TV shows on it.

He said to the kids, “Now, do you watch any of these shows on television?”

One little kid said, “Yeah, we watch all them. Except Star Trek, UFO, and Thunderbirds. We don’t watch them.” All the other little kids agreed.

The planner stopped and said, “Would you repeat that?” The little kid said, “Yeah, we watch all them, except Star Trek, UFO, and Thunderbirds. We don’t watch them.”

The planner looked towards the mirror, which he knew we were behind, and raised an eyebrow. He turned back to the group of kids.

He said, “So, does this mean that speculation about some vague technological future has no place in your everyday lives?”

The little kid said, “No, they ain’t on no more.

Club Tropicana drinks are free (but how about redesigns?)

1696774 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:15:00 GMT

No wonder our industry is in such a funk. A while back I stumbled upon the redesign of Tropicana in a store over here. I thought it looked cheap and nasty and so did a few other people after I posted a comment about it on my tumblr. After barely a few months PepsiCo are reverting to the old design. That's a monumental f**k up.

The same branding company - Arnell - that is currently embroiled in the $1m or is it $10m Pepsi redesign farce is behind the Tropicana work. As I said in my original post I could probably write something very lengthy about the complexities of design and meta language and loads of artsy fartsy nonsense (which it seems Peter Arnell is something of a God at) but fundamentally anyone with a brain can surely see that the old design worked well and the new design looks pale by

comparison.

I suppose marketing departments and agencies exist (and make money) through doing things like this but Tropicana is such a strong brand - why fix something that ain't broke? If they felt like they needed to freshen the brand up a little why not pour all that money into New Product Development, CSR or do something cool in the digital space?

I don't get it. Can anyone enlighten me?

Beckham: From Captain Courageous to Captain Birdseye

1715701 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:17:00 GMT

In 2006, Max Clifford said: ‘Brand Beckham rested on strong foundations, as long as he’s part of the England set-up. He’s the first superstar outside football; he’s a good- looking guy and there’s still no competitor to his image amongst the rest of the England team.’

He was right – and still is in 2009. Even at 33, ancient in football terms, David Beckham is still the world’s most marketable footballer and is a part of the England set up.

But are brands interested? Since his decision (if it really was his) to leave Real Madrid for Los Angeles two years ago Beckham’s brand portfolio has begun to wane. Gillette dropped him in 2007 and Pepsi has now followed suit.

But his marketing appeal extends far beyond football fans. Why else would AC Milan, where Beckham is currently on loan, want to add yet another player whose best years are behind him to their already pre-historic squad?

That Beckham finds now himself promoting Sharpie marker pens and GO3 fish fingers, rather than migrating to prestigious brands targeting an older audience, is absurd.

19 Entertainment was hired by Beckham to develop his brand globally through the transitional phase of his career - from player to ex-player. What a mess.

BBC launches Mr Riley’s meaty & sweety pie range

322703 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:25:00 GMT

Those watching Mischief on BBC last night (Britain’s Really Disgusting Foods) hopefully weren’t eating their evening meal in front of the TV. Mr Riley’s Pies may well come packaged to look tasty but when you discover what’s in them, even given the marketing spin, they are not so appetizing. The show that featured Steve Phillips (Spring Research), Brooke Dalton-Brewer (Spinnaker) and myself was actually great fun to make.

There’s nothing like a light hearted look at the darker side of marketing. Though I’m sure many packaging agencies are livid that advertising people exposing some of their devious techniques. Give it a personal identity, old fashion packaging for a traditional look, farm images for credibility and the master stroke – dolphin friendly. Northern comedian and anarchist, Alex Riley may not be to everyone’s taste (just like his dad’s pies – yes that is his dad on the packaging) but he makes it lot more interesting that those old stuffy BBC presenters who take it all too seriously.

Dressing up in a wet suit and filling it with water certainly makes the point about how much water is added to chicken! The programme format was simple - Alex goes in search of the most disgusting thing that can be legally sold as food. He discovers manufacturers have ingenious ways of transforming poor ingredients into something that looks and tastes like good food. Corn starch (wallpaper paste) is one common ingredient. He unearths hidden horrors, from substitute cheese to beef connective tissue and many other horrors. And that’s the legal stuff, imagine what’s not legal that gets sold? The programme set out to expose just how crap some food we’re sold can be.

What actually goes into those pies is disgusting though we all ate them and strangely they actually tasted ok. I had some in my office for weeks and as a sign of just how little real food was in them it took that long for them to go moldy. It was inevitable that the programme would set up big names and Brooker certainly got a pasting. Though I do think they were unfair to one of the big agencies (no names as I’m sure they’d prefer no further publicity).

Asda, by contrast, I thought came our really well. Thankfully, we were in on the humour rather than the victim and I do think that humour is a great way to make a point. However, there is a serious ethical and moral point – as an industry how do we cope with selling products we know are crap? Not so bad when everyone knows it - no one is trying to pretend KFC uses the finest quality freedom farm chickens. We buy it knowing exactly what it is so at least there’s an honesty about it.

But some of those pies and pasties sold as authentic quality foods aren’t. Sweets with chemicals in. Foods packed full of water or other substances. Kids snacks with e numbers? Apparently, Kellogg’s artificial Maple Syrup had the greatest number of e numbers in. Where do we draw the line? When is it acceptable and when isn’t it? Should we have a moral code in the ad business? Some agencies refuse to work on cigarette accounts (AMV), others on oil companies. With the great debate about marketing to kids, is there an ad agency who is prepared to say no to marketing crap snack food? When we did a research group with kids we asked them who are the bad brands - Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, Burger King, petrol companies and a few others were mentioned.

Although it’s easy to take pot shots at these ethically demonised brands (I could write a lot about the good work that McDonalds, Coke and Pepsi are doing) there are many worse ones that look like angels, selling us hidden horrors. Why are chocolate, biscuit and crisp manufacturers not demonised? The programme, like advertising will be tomorrow’s chip paper - no one questions how crap fish and chips are do they? It’ll have its 15 minutes of fame around the water cooler and then a few hours later we’ll all be eating Cornish pasties again and diving into a kebab after the pub.

It’s ironic that with the credit crunch sales of McDonalds has gone up – so much for the health conscious consumer. But more frightening than the revelation about ingredients (or the fact there’s a glass full of fat in every kebab) is the ad they made themselves. It’s a lesson in why you should never do it yourself and should always get experts to write your ads!!

There’s another episode that features a few adland faces in too – look out for the one on data – Your Identity For Sale (BBC Three Sept 11th). Rebecca Wilcox, who’s a lot more attractive than Alex Riley, clocks up over 1500 ads she’s exposed to in one day and reveals the abuse of data and a few revealing facts about Facebook.