Pepsi (2023)Copied

Pepsi unveiled its new logo on 28 March 2023, the first update to its globe in 14 years. The previous version set a lowercase pepsi outside the globe, a design The Drum's interviewees called a dated yin-yang. The new identity was timed to the brand's 125th anniversary.

The key insight came from research. PepsiCo chief design officer Mauro Porcini told CNN that when people are asked to draw the Pepsi logo from memory, most put the word inside the globe, though it had not looked that way for years. We couldn't ignore that kind of insight, he said, so the team embraced it. The second driver was commercial: black, the colour of Pepsi Zero Sugar, was brought in to signal the company's push behind its zero-sugar line.

The result unifies wordmark and globe. PEPSI is set in bold capitals in a new custom typeface, centred in a globe whose red, white and blue waves are straighter and more symmetrical. Black paints the wordmark and outlines the globe, and electric blue joins the palette. A new pulse graphic, meant to evoke the ripple, pop and fizz of the drink and the brand's ties to music, animates across touchpoints, along with a new can silhouette. Porcini said the work was led in-house by PepsiCo Design + Innovation over several years. Chief marketing officer Todd Kaplan told The Drum that projects like this don't happen overnight.

The rollout started in North America in autumn 2023 and went global in 2024, covering packaging, fountains, coolers, fleet, fashion and dining. Reaction was unusually warm for a big logo change. Food & Wine said Pepsi finally looked normal again, and Siegel+Gale's Amanda Bowers Wong told The Drum the straightened symbol was well balanced.

Marketing Dive got the strategic case from chief marketing officer Todd Kaplan: Pepsi had been doing things that were not shy or recessive, from a branded reality show to Peeps collaborations, and the soft, lowercase logo no longer matched that behaviour. The work was developed internally over years, with agency feedback along the way, and was the longest gap between Pepsi updates. Black was a strategic choice, putting Pepsi Zero Sugar at the centre of a master-brand approach. Kaplan said the company did not want to be a JPEG in the corner that people cut and paste, and argued the system read as a modernised version of something familiar to older buyers and as bold and on-trend to younger ones.

It is easy to call this a retreat to the 1990s, and partly it is. But the reasoning is sound. If people already remember the logo a certain way, drawing it that way makes it stronger, and the black outline gives it a contemporary edge the old globe never had.