Before our battery died and we darted out of TBWA’s Pepsi press conference extraordinaire, Frank Cooper, Pepsi’s portfolio brands vp, spoke about the company’s position on the whole logo situation.
In case you didn’t know, Pepsi’s new logo looks a lot like President Obama’s. The colors, the shape, the design — they all match up in a certain kind of way.
Cooper offered that the 110 year-old brand and President Omaba do share a common theme — change, optimism, America.
Red, white and blue became Pepsi’s colors during World War 2, to show support for America. Yay. And the round shape, well that’s unchanged. It’s the design within the circle that’s at issue, seemingly. And, the sense we got was that Pepsi senses that there’s something to this Obmamania — something that could sell more sodas.
Cooper added that optimism, change and hope are all part of the Pepsi mantra. Here’s a piece of the liveblog we hosted this morning from the event, and what we said at the time, about Cooper’s words.
AgencySpy: Cooper — Optimism, change, desire for all that — Obama tapped into that.
AgencySpy: the logos are diff — but Pepsi wants to tap into that spirit…wow, they admitted wanting to copy Obama — from where I’m sitting, anyway
So, maybe they do share a similar look. Circles work really well on buttons, the kind Obama was tossing to potential voters while he was on the campaign trail.
But at the end of the day, the happy coincidence appears to be just that. With more than a century of soda-making under their belt, Pepsi deserves a little breathing room on the issue — even if they did admit that they share the same optimism as our new president. And, is there anything really wrong with that — other than a lack of originality?