Just for the sake of it

   
Coca-Cola advertisements from 1936 (left) and 2007 (right)

The strength of the Coca-Cola brand is its visibility in a competitive drinks market. The world-famous logo remains remarkably distinct and unchanged after 120 years, and for this reason it is easily recognised by generations of consumers. Its heritage inspires confidence and induces loyalty, playing on our conservative instinct to buy goods with which we are familiar and comfortable. However, branding alone is not responsible for the success (or potential failure) of a product such as Coca-Cola. Branding is a process by which objects are made to seem to be more than the sum of their parts; it transforms an ordinary product into a unique commodity. Above all, the integrity of the product must be preserved. It is the foundation on which emotional attachment to a brand it built. This means consistently delivering a product to a specification and a high level of quality, to build a brand’s credibility. If, as occurred in 1985, the Coca-Cola recipe was to change substantially then the correlation with the brand would weaken to an extent where sales would suffer.

All lowercase = fail. Also a missed opprtunity to reunite text and graphic

Altering the brand of a product, particularly the logo, is a greater temptation, and one which cola rival Pepsi seem unable to resist. In autumn 2008 Pepsi unveiled the biggest overhaul to their logo since the introduction of the blue and white globe. It subscribes to an annoying school of thought that says that in order to appear modern and trendy you should only use lower-case letters. On a word like ‘Pepsi’, which now begins with a descending ‘p’, this looks particularly stupid. I don’t believe there is the same of justification for this redesign as existed half a century ago when Pepsi needed to distance itself from its biggest rival.

Pepsi and Coca-Cola in 1940

Pepsi Cola is quite an old brand, albeit one that has had many face-lifts. The drink was first formulated in 1898, 12 years after Coca-Cola. It was given the name Pepsi-Cola in 1903 and shortened to Pepsi in 1962. Pepsi-Cola’s first logo was designed to mirror Coca-Cola with an elaborate red script; the intention was probably to share in Coca-Cola’s success by making the two products harder to differentiate. However, the problem with this strategy is that it risks presenting the product as an inferior copy unable to stand up on its own merits. The best decision that PepsiCo’s marketing department made was to drop the script in favour of clean sans-serif capitals. The addition of the Pepsi globe originated from a patriotic move made during the Second World War when red, white and blue waves were added to the bottle cap. It evolved and was integrated with the product name. At this point I believe that Pepsi found a logo that could be used to establish a brand identity clearly independent of Coca-Cola, and so it should have remained without need of the regular tinkering it has received in the years since.

Pepsi in the 1960s and 1970s

A logo should transcend changes in style that affect the design of labels, posters and advertisements, and be beacon of consistency when all else around is changing. That way Pepsi can still chase the next ‘Pepsi Generation’ without sacrificing brand recognition, because ultimately that’s how I feel about the new Pepsi logo: I don’t recognise it as symbol of a drink I grew up with, as with Coca-Cola's logo, but see it as a shallow attempt to position Pepsi as part of modern culture. Coca-Cola doesn't respond this way and as a result is a more consistent and confident brand. Pepsi should learn the lesson that logos should not be changed for the sake of change.