Crikey

Pepsi’s new logo  — a million-dollar effort from the Arnell group  —  was revealed late last year. At the time, it was widely panned by the Internet, but as the web tends to have the attention span of an ADHD toddler on Red Bull, interest in the topic had well and truly passed.

Until Monday, when a user on social bookmarking site Reddit had this to say:

I have a funny story, which I probably should not share at all with Reddit, or really anyone. I work freelance ‘in the industry’, and one of my clients did some of the Pepsi spots which are on air.

During the initial treatment, the advertising agency which won the Pepsi contract for the re-design sent over the design guidelines and a presentation on the design process of the new logo.

I happened to be able to overhear a conversation regarding the new logo, and actually had to interrupt because ive never heard a discussion over anything so ludicrous in my life.

I happened to nab a copy of the PDF, and have to share it. It really hammers in the stereotype of Advertising in general, and the complete idiocy that goes in to marketing. I really suggest reading till the end. It just gets better and better.

And the document is truly staggering. ‘Breathtaking’, you might say.

Starting with a look at Pepsi’s ‘DNA’, they take us through at their design strategy, called ‘Breathtaking’, which is apparently ”based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy creating an authentic Constitution of Design.”

From there, it’s anyone’s guess as to how to translate this veritable feat of marketing wank, but it has something to do with energy fields:

And its gravitational pull within the supermarket:

And then, uhm, this:

Naturally, Pepsi’s logo is now back on the Internet’s radar in a big way, with just about everyone weighing in on the mindblowing BS contained in the document.

Brand New describe it as “at once hilarious, pretentious and delirious as they try to establish Pepsi as the center of the universe” and compare it to the disastrous Agency.com Subway pitch, while Gawker ’s assessment sums the whole thing up pretty nicely:

Last year Pepsi spent several hundred million dollars on a new logo. Everyone figured they had just ripped off the Obama logo. But now an internal document from the branding company has surfaced: Breathtaking bullsh-t.

See, there’s no way the branding agency could charge millions if they just went in and told Pepsi, “Yea, we kinda rotated your old logo a little bit, and made the wavy white line thingy in the middle go diagonal.”

Download the full PDF for yourself here (or here or here).