Pepsi is shaking up its visual identity to match the liveliness the beverage giant wants to bring to the table. They are doing all these things that are not shy, they’re not recessive, so the present logo and visual system feel inconsistent with how the brand has been behaving.”
Pepsi today unveiled an overhaul of its logo and touch points spanning digital and physical channels, including packaging, fountain and cooler equipment, trucking fleets, dining, and fashion. Years in the works, the makeover was developed internally at Pepsi, with feedback along the way from various agency partners. The new look will be implemented across brand touchpoints for the brand’s 125th anniversary.
With this new chapter, Pepsi is enacting a hard pivot away from the type of minimalist branding that’s overtaken marketing over the past decade-plus. The soda’s muted blue colour scheme has been swapped for a loud electric shade, complemented by sharper black tones to create contrast. The update also puts Pepsi Zero Sugar, which already uses the colour black on its packaging, front and centre in the marketer’s portfolio as the better-for-you option becomes a more substantial growth driver.
Another alteration consumers may soon notice is that the word “Pepsi” has been shifted up to appear inside the soda’s globe-shaped logo, an attempt to bring more cohesion and flexibility to the design while harkening back to past iterations of the iconography. The revamped “wordmark” is written in a bolder custom typeface, differing from the current version’s soft, lower-cased letters. Along with rejiggering existing assets, Pepsi is introducing a “pulse” motif to communicate a sense of energy and movement and pay homage to the music-oriented efforts that have resulted in some of its most memorable marketing.
The timing of the makeover aligns with Pepsi’s 125th anniversary in the fall. The new visual update marks the largest gap in time for Pepsi between making such alterations. The last major update was 14 years ago. Looking forward, staying agile with fast-shifting consumer behaviours remains Pepsi’s top mandate.