Are you a 25-to-34-year-old male who prefers regular Dr Pepper, but wants fewer calories—and also knows that Diet Dr. Pepper is for queers? Allow us to introduce you to Dr Pepper Ten: ten masculine calories, made outta balls.
During a robbery at a Texas convenience store, the store owner, stranded at the back of the store, hurled Pepsi cans at the thief. Grand marketing scheme staged by Pepsi to sell more soda? That's for you to decide.
Pepsi cola has already been revealed to be the pinnacle of the entire universe. But that has not resulted in Pepsi's "Max" chemical product beating Coke's similar chemical product in market share. Solution? War.
Are you an up-and-coming young musician looking to "make it" in the shoddy remains of the "music industry?" Well I hope you rap very much about McDonald's, Pepsi, and/ or Coca-Cola, the only remaining entities who can "discover artists."
Health food manufacturer and exponentially dimensionalized fulcrum of universal gravity PepsiCo is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to make America healthier, with things like "designer" salt crystals for Lay's potato chips. What else could they do?
In a single hour, Macy's sold 72,000 bottles of Beyonce's new perfume yesterday. If you think that's impressive, check out all the other stuff she uses her famous face to sell. A portrait of the artist as a commodity.
Television still accounts for 99% of all video viewing in the U.S. But Pepsi's announcement that it will not advertise in February's Superbowl has pushed the TV doomsday clock a couple minutes closer to midnight.
Last night the latest piece of business to drop into the offices of Mad Men's Sterling Cooper was Patio, the diet soda with possibly the worst name ever. Turns out Pepsi actually made the stuff back in 1963.
If they only had a heart. Upon seeing this week's spine-tingling video of Michael Jackson's '84 Pepsi ad accident, Pepsi and vid director Bob Giraldi don't give a shit. The international moment of dead pop star respect is officially finito.
You might remember Peter Arnell from his embarrassing rebrandings of Pepsi and Tropicana, or maybe for being an evil, foot-rub demanding boss. Now the branding wizard owes HarperCollins $100,000, for sucking, at books.
• The Beatrice Inn will need to install fire sprinklers, add an additional exit, and create a wider entrance to the haunt if it wants to reopen its doors. [P6]
• Frederick Lesort's Frederick's Madison filed for bankruptcy today. [Crain's]
• Masa charges a 20% service charge to diners' tabs, although they prefer to…
You may not know Peter Arnell, but you know his work. The crazy Pepsi-is-the-center-of-the-universe logo design! The awful failure of the new Tropicana design! But what's the man himself like? Massively insecure, of course:
Shocker: PepsiCo hired the profound geniuses behind the Breathtaking, universe-shifting multimillion-dollar tweaking of the Pepsi logo to redesign Tropicana's packaging. It was a complete and utter failure! Yet another reason "rebranding" is dumb:
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 bullshit.
• Doubledown Media, the publisher of magazines like Trader, Cigar Report, and Dealmaker, and other titles aimed at the Wall Street set has shut down. [Folio]
• Those Pepsi ads that resembled a "MacGruber" skit from SNL? It was part of a deal between the soft drink company and Lorne Michaels, naturally. [NYT]
• The…
• A round of staff cuts at the Journal may come next week. [Portfolio]
• CBS and David Letterman are negotiating a new deal to keep him on the network after his contract expires in 2010. [B&C]
• Is The New Yorker in trouble? [Gawker]
• Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper company, is writing off $5 billion. [E&P]
•…
• Channels like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon will no longer be available to Time Warner Cable customers beginning at midnight, unless Viacom and Time Warner settle a dispute over fees. [Bloomberg]
• The Village Voice has laid off Nat Hentoff and Lynn Yaeger. [NYT]
• Ratings for MTV's The City and Bromance were…
♦ When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦ National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦ Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT
This economic downturn has, surprisingly, not killed the "branding" industry, which exists for the sole purpose of allowing graphic design majors to soak clueless corporate behemoths out of millions of dollars for what amounts to a few tweaks of a computer design template. We salute you, brand consultants! You are the…
Michelle Obama is scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention in about an hour. It's the first thing any reasonable number of people will care about at the big political show in Denver. When the speech ends, and talking head spin mode begins, everyone should remember the TV people are completely desperate to…
