Community

First off, to answer the question everyone asks me: my name is pronounced P-yet. Allegedly it's the French pronunciation of a Dutch name. I'm not Dutch, but my Dad is French, and both my parents are big fans of the artist Piet Mondrian, and clearly Mondrian's first name.

I've been doing the journalism thing since 2001, my first year at college, and have covered a wide variety of newspaper beats, from pop culture to religion to police reporting to health. But many of my favorite pieces, like this feature for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, have had a marketing component to them, so I'm thrilled to be writing and blogging about marketing full time.

Starting right now.

So watching TV New Year's Eve while waiting for the crystal ball to drop, my screen was suddenly awash in a flash of bright colors and cheery words like "Optimism," "Joy" and "Hooray!" And at the center of it all - Pepsi's revised logo, the tell-tale sign of a new marketing campaign. See the spot below:

I talked to my editor John Frank about the ad yesterday, and he said exactly what I was thinking the moment I saw the spot - he thought it was a Barack Obama ad.

The similarities are striking - so much so that the Obama logo will instantly pop up following a Google search for "New Pepsi Logo". For starters, there are the campaigns' sense of unyielding optimism, so apparent in the Pepsi spot that the word is spelled out across the screen. The Obama logo and Pepsi logos both are reflective of the letter "O" - in the Pepsi ad, the logo actually fills in for the "O"s in words like "Joy" and "Hooray." There's the red, white and blue color scheme, featured in both logos, and the layered colors in both spots are at an eye-catching slant.

The difference though - really the only one I could spot - was that the Obama logo color scheme, top to bottom, is blue, white and red. Pepsi has the blue and red flipped for their logo, which traditionally has been the case. That, and the fact that Pepsi didn't opt to use the popular Obama catchphrase, "Hope," in the first spot. (The comparisons would have been way too obvious if it had).

Nevertheless, it seems that Pepsi is borrowing very heavily from the Obama playbook, or so says the blogosphere (self included). But while the iconic Obama logo and upbeat marketing message seemed to work for our next president, will the elements translate into a positive Pepsi campaign? Or will the targeted millennial market reject the Pepsi campaign as a mere copycat of the original Obama way? Time will surely tell, but as always we're interested to read your thoughts. Feel free to post away!