Pepsi hearts the Obama Generation, but do they heart Pepsi back?

PepsiCo has been making big waves this month in the blogosphere with design overhauls for three of their largest brands. There's a lot of negativity about Tropicana's new minimalist design, and Gatorade's new Sesame Street- looking getup. This bottle of Gatorade is brought to you by a lightening bolt, and the letter "G." Says one DieLine.com commentor, "I saw this and immediately thought of Super Grover from Sesame Street."'

But the most buzz has gone to the new look for Pepsi, and their "Refresh Everything" campaign, which includes a logo that looks a lot like Obama's. The logo has even been grouped, by the New York Times, with "Obamabilia," merchandise that shows or references the President-Elect in order to generate sales.

So is PepsiCo trying to follow Obama's footsteps and gain grassroots popularity? Are they reaching out to America's youth? They sure are. Pepsi has created a cutesy video full of celebs, calling on "YOU" to film an open letter to President-Elect Obama, and upload it to their YouTube Channel, which currently has 44 videos and a mere 352 subscribers. The Jonas Brothers Channel has 421,646 subscribers.

So if Pepsi is not wildly popular on YouTube, what about on the Facebook? During Obama's campaign, he had widespread support across Facebook, including groups, events, applications, and mentions in profiles, posted items, and blog posts.

Facebook's Pages feature allows users and companies to create a page dedicated to a product/organization/person/etc., and then allows users to become fans. Users can also search to see which pages have the most fans, overall or by category. So who has the most fans of any page on Facebook? Barack Obama, with over 3 million fans. Coca-Cola is in at number three with over 2 million fans, but Pepsi does not even appear to have an official page. A search of Pages brings up fan pages for a few of the Pepsi varieties (Max, Crystal) but none for the soft drink itself. Clearly, they are not capitalizing the way the Obama campaign did. Even Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger has a fan page, (with over 24,000 fans!!!) and he's only been famous for less than a day!

So, if Pepsi is serious about riding the Obama wave to become the new All-American cola, they need to get to the heart of Obama's success: Change you can believe in. Can a campaign called "Refresh Everything" really convince consumers that Pepsi is any different than the soda that's been trailing Coke in US sales for years? If it could, wouldn't Pepsi be riding in between Obama and Coca-Cola in Facebook popularity, instead of who is there now? D'oh!

I don't drink soda

Disclaimer: I do drink soda. Specifically, Dr. Pepper and the tried and true "DC" (Diet Coke).

If you live on the coasts, it's called soda, if you're in the Midwest it's pop, and if you're in certain parts of the South it's "a Coke" (even if it's not Coca-Cola.) But do you drink it? And if not, why?

With NY's Governor proposing a budget that would include a tax on Coke and Pepsi, I wondered, are there good reasons for not drinking soda?

“I stopped drinking it because it was too much sugar and the caffeine was hell on my stomach and nerves. I really like cherry or vanilla colas and dr. pepper though. I still get the occasional craving for one of these.” Female, Early 20s, Colorado

“Pop is so bad for you!!! Bad for your skin, bad for your insides. Over all
it's not a healthy choice.”

“I don't like soda. Makes me feel all bloated and gross. Ick.” Female, 19, California

So, for the most part, the consensus among those who choose not to drink soda seemed to be that the choice was due to the physical impact: Soda makes you sick... and overweight.

The majority of professed "Soda haters" were young women, though there were a smattering of males, mostly those who seemed athletic, who also expressed disdain for the beverage. Of the top sodas imbibed by "Non- Soda Drinkers" were Dr. Pepper and Ginger Ale.

Some other reasons described were financial (the money could be better spent elsewhere) and weight loss (quitting soda was a quick way to shed some pounds). There was a healthy debate on facebook as to whether the drink should be "soda" or "pop," as well as a number of groups who didn't care because they "drink beer."

Preference against soda also appeared often on blogs, MySpace and other social networking sites as part of different surveys that circulate the web. On the questions that asked about soda preference, many soda adversaries expressed their distate for any type of soda.

So what do you think? Do you drink Soda? Will you quit?

Interested in more analysis? Drop me a line at heatherm@nicholasresearch.com