For its first few decades of national advertising, Pepsi competed the way underdogs usually do: on price. Its famous 1939 jingle, “Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot,” boasted of twelve full ounces, “twice as much for a nickel.” The pitch worked in the Depression, but it left Pepsi with a lasting image problem. It was the cola you bought when you couldn’t afford Coke.
The gap was enormous. When Alan Pottasch started working on Pepsi’s advertising in 1957, Coca-Cola outsold Pepsi six to one.
From the product to the people
The Pepsi Generation, launched in 1963, flipped the usual approach. Most ads of the era described the product: its taste, its size, its price. Pepsi’s new campaign described the customer instead. The ads showed young people doing active things, on beaches, on motorbikes, playing volleyball, and told viewers that drinking Pepsi made them part of that group.
The idea came out of a slogan contest devised by Pottasch. He later admitted it was a gamble: “For us to name and claim a whole generation after our product was a rather courageous thing that we weren’t sure would take off.”
Why the timing mattered
Pepsi was making a bet on the baby boomers, who were entering their teens and twenties in huge numbers and were keen to separate themselves from their parents. By claiming the word “generation,” Pepsi quietly cast Coca-Cola as the drink of the older one. It was the brand taking the “young” side of the 1960s generation gap.
That positioning had a practical benefit too. A company that could not win on heritage, and did not want to keep competing on price, could win on identity. Anyone could feel young; not everyone could feel like the establishment.
What it changed
- Lifestyle advertising went mainstream. The Pepsi Generation is widely cited as one of the first major campaigns to sell an attitude rather than a feature.
- It forced a response. Coca-Cola’s famous 1971 “Hilltop” ad, with young people singing on a hillside, also sold a feeling rather than the drink itself.
- It gave Pepsi a story for decades. In 1984 Pottasch refreshed the theme as “The Choice of a New Generation,” signing up pop stars to front it. In January 1997 Pepsi launched “GeneratioNext” and bought around four minutes of commercial time during Super Bowl XXXI.
The limits of the idea
Claiming youth has a cost: every generation grows up. Pepsi had to keep reinventing what “new” meant, and not every attempt landed. Its protest-themed ad with Kendall Jenner, decades later, was in part another effort to speak for a young generation, and it was pulled within a day.
Still, the core insight held. Pepsi did not need to prove it tasted better or cost less. It needed people to feel that choosing it said something about them. Decades later, most consumer brands advertise that way, and the Pepsi Generation is a large part of the reason.