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Diet Pepsi's Liquid Courage Marketing Lessons from the New 'Skinny Can' By Marie Elwood, Brand Marketing Consultant  March 15, 2011 - Speed Dial Issue 65

Have you seen Diet Pepsi’s new “skinny can”? The long, slim can made its debut a month ago during Fashion Week in NYC, and it’s now being advertised and distributed across the entire US.   Packaging changes like this usually don’t impress me. Let's be honest: most attempts to refresh packaging don't deserve a second glance. Packaging modfications are all too often superficial band-aids that don’t address fundamental business issues; I often wonder if their only real purpose is to let marketing teams feel like they’re doing something while they avoid the heavy lifting of true innovation and competitive strategizing.   (Wait a minute, did I just say that out loud?!- - wink)

So why am I a fan of this particular packaging change?

I’m impressed by Diet Pepsi’s ‘Skinny Can’ for three reasons:

1) The design is completely “intuitive”; it's a natural fit with the product itself
2) It’s entirely different from everything else in the carbonated beverage market
3) It took uncommon vision & courage on the part of the brand team

Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s just another aluminum can... or isn’t it?

Granted, the 'skinny can' isn't made of some new, space-age material sourced from the furthest corner of outer Uzbekistan, so if you haven’t worked for a big manufacturer, you many not immediatelyunderstand why it's worth noting.

But here’s the reason. Pepsico is a $60B company that produces a mind-boggling amount of soda every second on some of the most sophisticated bottling equipment in the world. From an operational standpoint, Pepsico is a “machine”, a finely-tuned, lightning-fast, highly-calibrated machine.

The problem is that "the machine" takes on a life of its own.

Most marketers in big consumer packaged goods quickly learn that you just don’t mess with the machine. Anything that’s going to upset the status quo from a production standpoint almost always triggers a knee-jerk "no." Nope, can’t do it. Not an option.

As a result, most marketing teams get to the point where they don’t even challenge the machine. Their minds stop short; they won't go there any more. It's off-limits. Instead, all their innovation work & opportunity evaluation has to fit around “the way we’re set up.”

And THAT’S why the Skinny Can impresses me.

It means that some of the marketing people at Pepsico have a rare and wonderful courage- -a willingness to look the “machine” square the eye and say “what if…?” They dared to dream again, to push past ordinary limitations and to wreak havoc because they felt it was the right thing to do, both for their brand and their consumers.

Dream the dream- - but run the numbers, too.

I met some of the marketers at Pepsi when I was working for another consultancy in Manhattan several years ago. Let me tell you- - despite working in carbonated beverages, they’re not a bubbly bunch. They're sharp, no-nonsense professionals with rigorous analytical skills. You can bet they didn’t just interrupt "the machine" on a whim; they would have kicked the can through a battery of tough fiscal scenarios first. Brand management at Diet Pepsi isn't about lightweight, wishful thinking; they did due diligence on their dreams.

From diet soda to baby elephants: a reminder for the rest of us.

Well, good for Pepsi-- but how does this apply to me?

Remember those stories about how they train 12,000-pound elephants to stay tethered to a puny little stake in the ground? It all begins with tying down the littlest elephants, who are are too young and too weak to pull up stakes. They soon decide the stakes are stacked against them, and after a while, they grow into strong, magnificent creatures who forever remain prisoners of their own minds.

That's our challenge, no matter what industry we’re in. We all have stakes in the ground that tell us that we can’t mess with the machine. If we don't begin challenging them, many of the big, powerful ideas we have will stay on the horizon, beyond our reach when it doesn't need to be that way.

So, my friends, raise your glass (or can)...

Because today we drink to courage- -  the courage to challenge old assumptions and to see what new worlds we can discover.Cheers!

- Marie

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