Pepsi’s marketing history is the story of a permanent challenger. For decades it was the cheaper cola, the one you bought when you couldn’t afford Coke. Almost everything it has done in advertising since has been an attempt to change that position, sometimes brilliantly, sometimes disastrously.
The first big shift came with the Pepsi Generation in 1963, which stopped selling price and started selling identity, claiming the young side of the generation gap for Pepsi. In 1975 the Pepsi Challenge attacked Coca-Cola on taste with filmed blind tests, and the pressure it created helped push Coca-Cola into the New Coke mistake.
Being the bold challenger has costs too. Crystal Pepsi, launched in 1992 with a big marketing budget, won early trial but not repeat buyers. The 1996 Pepsi Points Harrier jet ad was meant as a joke and ended in a federal court. And in 2017, the Kendall Jenner “Live for Now” ad, another attempt to speak for a young generation, was pulled a day after release.
The thread through all five is the same instinct: be young, be bold and pick a fight. When that instinct has been aimed at a rival, it has produced some of the best campaigns in soft drink history. When it has been aimed at the culture at large, the results have been far less predictable.