PepsiCo products suddenly become a whole lot harder to spot
Posted on Thu Jan 8 2009
A trip to the grocery store can be confusing these days for anyone looking for Pepsi, Gatorade or Tropicana. Each of those PepsiCo products has been radically repackaged within the same month.
The idea is to give the sluggish beverage segment a boost. Today, Tropicana announced its new packaging and ad campaign. (I'm a fan of the new look, considering the last time they repackaged the brand, the gallon jugs looked so much like laundry detergent that I accidentally placed one next to my washing machine.) Pepsi is now almost unrecognizable with its new, sleek, dark-blue packaging and Obama logo—introduced with ads on New Year's Eve. And Gatorade is now just "G." Not that they're letting anyone know this. Teaser ads, featuring a variety of athletes (hats off for including autistic basketball star Jason McElwain), make no mention of what G is.
Fans of Gatorade line extensions Fierce, X-Factor and AM will be scratching their heads even harder. Those brands have been renamed Bring It, Be Tough and Shine On, respectively. Not sure how they'll explain that to the kid searching aimlessly for his Fierce Grape.
—Posted by Kenneth Hein
