Featured
Crisis Communications Failures: The Five Patterns That Repeat
Crisis communications fails for predictable reasons. Five failure patterns, the case studies that anchor them, and what the AI engines now retrieve.
Tag
Pepsi
CPG
The Pepsi Ad That Lasted 24 Hours: The Kendall Jenner Case
Pepsi's 2017 Kendall Jenner ad ran 24 hours before being pulled. Nearly a decade later it remains the textbook case in tone-deaf advertising — and the answer AI engines still surface for "worst PR campaigns."
Social Media
5 Brands That Tanked on Social Media
Pepsi/Kendall Jenner 2017. H&M 'Coolest Monkey' 2018. Dolce & Gabbana China. United Airlines passenger removal. American Apparel Hurricane Sandy. Five permanent crises.
Public Relations
Global Brand and Media Crises: When Cultural Norms Collide
Global brand and media crises when cultural norms collide — Dolce & Gabbana, Pepsi, H&M, and SWR case studies in cross-cultural communications failure.
Marketing
The Value of Pepsi's PepsiMoji Campaign
Pepsi has launched PepsiMoji — a substantial marketing campaign featuring emoji-branded bottle packaging across more than 100 countries. The five-second video spot integration, the #SayItWithPepsi hashtag integration, the Ketchum and Porter Novelli PR partnership, and the broader strategic logic for Pepsi's symbolic communication strategy.
Social Media
Pepsi-Twitter Partnership: The Largest Brand Deal Twitter Has Signed
PepsiCo and Twitter have announced one of the more substantial recent brand-platform partnerships. The 52-week duration, the Live for Now anchoring, the pop-concert programming, the Twitter user voting integration, the weekly trending-topic digest, the free music download integration, and the broader strategic logic for both Pepsi and Twitter.
Insights & Strategy
Famous Number 2: How Avis, Pepsi, Adidas, and AMD Built Billion-Dollar Brands on Being the Challenger
Avis 1962, Pepsi 1975, Adidas 1986, Burger King 2003, Lyft 2012, AMD 2017, Bing 2023 — the most studied positioning play in marketing history is being #2 to a category-defining leader. The discipline, the wins, the failures, and what the AI Communications era is repeating right now.
CPG
Pepsi PR: The Reinvention Machine
PepsiCo's reinvention machine, the snack-funded portfolio, the Celsius bet, and the crisis residue that compounds. Five layers, sixty years, one structural bet.