Okay, so you are an employer, large, small, it doesn’t matter, and you are planning a big advertising or marketing campaign. You are rolling out new products and services, or you are rebranding. Why are you rebranding? Well, probably because someone told you it is time to freshen up your old one.
Make it modern, a little pizazz. Make it relevant to the times. Rebrand and expand your target markets. Others who never thought of using your products and services or who saw it only appealing to a certain demographic, upon seeing your new branding efforts will take note and make use of what you are offering. If you were the Cadillac of your sector and customers thought of you as old and stodgy, well and little fancy branding will change their perspective.
And if you are an old and venerable soft drink who for many years had only one principal rival and now you have many, oh, what do you do? Rebrand. As reported in an article in Advertising Age, Pepsico, the makers of Pepsi Cola and other soft drinks is ready to put behind them their mostly failed rebranding episode. In the article the company CEO vows the company will learn from its mistakes. One such mistake is to allow the rebranding process to drag out for years. The other is to limit the process and not immerse the company in the rebranding effort.
I would add that the rebranding effort itself is…to be kind…wanting. Back some time ago in my blog article, It Ain’t Small Change When Pepsi Does a Branding Change, I predicted this rebranding effort would fail. I couldn’t see it. While I have some background in marketing and branding, I normally don’t address the subject directly. But in this case the branding failure was so obvious to me that I had to write about it. More to the point, I had to wonder why nobody else saw that this effort, the design, the repackaging, etc, would end up in its aftermath as almost a good idea.
So now here we are. The incrementally smiling faces for each of the products is far too subtle in a world of bombast. The logos look nice enough, but who cares that the bottle cap looking logos are smiling? I realize this is to assure that Pepsi is a positive drinking experience with the smiles indicating satisfaction and pleasure. But after months of development and millions of bucks…this is it?
Okay, so who is responsible? A lot of people. Most will keep their jobs, and some may lose them. Some of the agencies who developed and executed the rebranding efforts may find themselves eliminated from future campaigns. I don’t know. I don’t know of the contractual arrangements or much about the decision making process that took place between Pepsi and its creative vendors. What I do know is that someone may have done due diligence, perhaps conducted background checks on those who were actually on the teams. I am not talking about criminal records background checks but reference verifications, so that the contractor could ascertain what experience was being brought to the overall teams. Did the team members have familiarity with soft drink branding? What were their previous successes? Stuff like that.
I realize this is unconventional and when a company contracts with advertising and marketing agencies it is supposed to put its faith in the fact they are bringing the best people on board. Employees who know what they are doing and who can get the job done. But then when you are investing this kind of money wouldn’t a few background checks, comprehensive reference verifications help assure the contractor the vendors are on the right track for marketing their product?
And then of course on the other side of the table, just who was riding point for Pepsi? Who failed to see what to me was pretty obvious?
Okay, so the campaign is over and rests on its laurels…at the bottom of a swamp. It was costly and embarrassing. In the end it was a big ho hum and another expenditure. Will it move the Pepsi brand forward? Doubtful. So there we are.
