Pepsi’s Weirdest Logo

The evolution of the Pepsi logo. Source: CNN Business

Earlier this week, and just ahead of the brand’s 125th anniversary, Pepsi revealed its first brand redesign in 15 years. Company executives said the logo conveyed “boldness and confidence.” Fast Company called the brand refresh “the best Pepsi has looked in decades.” The design blog Brand New judged the new look, which had been created by an in-house agency, “as close as it gets to Pepsi giving Coca-Cola the middle finger and moving on.”

I like the new visual identity — and its inventive rollout — just fine. But what I’m thinking about right now is the last Pepsi logo redesign, in 2008, and about how that design was sold to Pepsi decisionmakers.

It started mysteriously. And then it got weird.

I remember the 2008 rebranding campaign because I wrote about it — twice. In January 2009 I wrote about a stealth rollout in San Francisco’s BART stations consisting of posters that deployed the new logo without a brand name. Some of the posters appeared to borrow, or steal, from the Obama-for-president campaign graphics.

One of the San Francisco posters. “Yes We Can” was Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan. Photo: Nancy Friedman (January 2009)

The logo, of course, turned out to be Pepsi’s, designed by the Arnell Group, a division of global branding giant Omnicom. The only clue to the source of…