Blog: Going against the flow could cost your brand a lot of money

Marketing teams make decisions about new labels, changes in packaging, fine tunnings in logos or strategy position... among others. Each one has a huge impact in sales and consumer perception about the product/brand (however sometimes it is difficult to measure it). Having a brand strategy is key to make decisions with less risk, guaranteeing that each action contributes to your mid/long term strategy. First questions we ask our clients are: what´s your role in the category? Do you want to be the category leader? Do you have budget for that? Do you want to be a follower? Do you want to be perceived as a challenger? Are you playing on quality or cost? These initial questions are part of the UNDERSTAND phase in Design Thinking process. Key stakeholders must be alignned on the given answers. Examples always help us to better understand theories. Let´s see a recent one:

Pepsi

We all know Pepsi brand. In Europe, I would say it´s role is the follower, happy to be the second player in Cola drinks (if we dont consider PL). Coca Cola, the cola category leader, is the one responsible to create the category rules. This band spends lot of time finding the right brand architecture: Coca Cola Zero, Coca Cola Zero Zero... Pepsi decided to follow their own coding, having Pepsi Max as their zero version. What happened? Consumers didnt understand the Pepsi Max product proposition. Why to have "MAX" word in a product that doesnt contain sugar at all? This was so obvious from consumer perspective, however the brand continued pushing for Pepsi Max. Their strategy was not to be a leader, however they wanted to set different rules with a lower budget than category leader. The result: a faillure (in our opinion). Most consumers didnt understand the product and couldnt connect it with a zero sugar proposition.

After years of potential sales loss, the company announced in June 2023 that they will follow category rules, renaming their current Pepsi Max as Pepsi Zero. This small detail on pack could have a huge impact on sales. In our opinion, Pepsi was not helping consumers to identify their products. The company were following their wish to become category leader.. Finally they realized it is not possible.

In our opinion, this is a great decision from a humble team who accepted their role in the market. As they mentioned in this article, the aim of the change is to facilitate consumes understanding of the product. Well done Pepsi team!!

PepsiZero