Key Numbers (December 2008):

Sales: $43,251.0M
One year growth: 9.6%
Net income: $5,142.0M
Income growth: (9.1%)
Employees: 198,000

The Pepsi beverage was first made in 1898 by a pharmacist named Caleb Bradham from North Carolina, although PepsiCo as we know it today only began in 1965 after merging with Frito Lay adding the variety of complementary snacks to their roster – something decided by two men Donald M. Kendall and Herman W. L. The company was founded in Chicago but is now stationed in Purchase, NY.

Today PepsiCo accounts for brands like KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell as part of the Tricon Global Restaurants marketed by Yum! Brands Inc., along with the Quaker Oats family composed of Aunt Jemima, Cap’n Crunch, Life and several others (to see a full list click here) – all of which are spread over 200 countries.

In 1903 the company was trademarked and although once scribbled by the creator himself under the name “Brad’s Drink,” in 1906 the original Pepsi logo under the name Pepsi was put in use under the slogan “The Original Pure Food Drink.” In response to a sugar crisis in the early thirties, Pepsi doubled their quantities and marketed the beverage as “Refreshing & Healthful.” – a slogan that was dropped after the price soon decreased from ten cents to five. During the war in the following decade, CEO Walter Mack came up with the idea of Pepsi’s famously engraved bottle along with it’s iconic red, blue and white color scheme and moving into the sixties the colors transformed into a bottle cap logo under the slogan”Bigger Drink, Better Taste.”

The actual Pepsi logo we see today with two bulls-eye marks was not introduced until 1962, at which point the logo stayed relatively the same. That is, until last year in 2009 when the Arnell Group revealed their new hip look for Pepsi (including an updated bottle), described here and in more detail, the official design brief. Whether it is effective or not is unknown at this point, but while some like it, others despite it (one opinion I find helpful found here).

Pepsi is well known for their celebrity endorsements with such stars as Brittany Spears and Beyonce (see full list of spokespersons here) but as a whole, Pepsi marketing has always been aimed at their competition with Coca-Cola and has effectively kept in the race with the familiar Pepsi Taste Challenge and other such campaigns. In 2003 however, the brand took a hit after claims were made by people who apparently encountered cans of Pepsi with syringes, bullets and pins in them. Using only the best PR agents the company handled the claims so well that they are now considered a textbook example of how to defend a brand in such circumstances.

Internationally, the brand has made some controversial expansions into Burma and Israel resulting in a loss of market share to Coca-Cola but PepsiCo continues to thrive along side them in India, a once promising beverage market where consumption is now made routine. It wasn’t until 1991 that India even allowed foreign markets into their economy. At that point PepsiCo partnered with government-owned Punjab Agro Industrial Corporation (PAIC) and Voltas India Limited and immediately started making acquisitions. They officially ended the joint venture  in 1994 becoming an autonomous powerhouse, although like any other major corporation, the brand has encountered their share of problems along the way.

Despite their share of 95% of the soft-drink market in India, PepsiCo has been developing a bad reputation ever since – during the same year as the syringes media hype (2003) – The Delhi based Center for Science and Environment announced that PepsiCo beverages contained traces of pesticides.

More recently, whether it be related to their growing bad reputation or merely to recent trends, since 2006 under the supervision of Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi the PepsiCo brands have adopted several environmental initiatives into their product and marketing. The campaign is currently being run through The Pepsi Eco Challenge.

Trivia

• In 2004 PepsiCo received a 100 percent rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the LGBT-advocate group Human Rights Campaign.
• In 2005, after 112 years, the Pepsi beverage finally outsold their number one competitor Coca-Cola.
• In 2009 PepsiCo spent $4.2 million on lobbying towards beverage taxes – a 300 percent increase since 2005.

Sources

http://www.answers.com/topic/pepsico-inc

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/rant/pepsipanic.html

http://www.logoblog.org/pepsi_logo.php

Filed under: Brand Profiles
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