'Globe’ bottle spins around cost savings

Pepsi is pouring on a new and more dynamic look, with a 20-oz polyethylene terephthalate bottle for the U.S. market for all 14 Pepsi and Diet Pepsi carbonated soft drinks. The new package echoes a design created for Pepsi’s international bottlers and is part of the company’s larger Choreography Branding program, implemented in early 2007 to freshen the brand’s image in an effort to keep it relevant to teens and young adults, the company notes.

Bubbling over with energy that reinforces the brand equity, the new bottle, designed by New York City-based 4sight, inc. (www.4sight.com), incorporates the iconic Pepsi globe, molded on the front and back of the bottle, below the neck. Under the sculpted globe, horizontal waves uncoil from the bottle’s top to its bottom to convey movement.

“If you look at the bottle up close, you will see that the globe is compressing a spring; it’s almost bouncing on the spring, and it’s about to shoot off into the air,” says 4sight president Stuart Leslie, “There’s a dynamic tension created by the coils being tightly wound around the globe.”

The challenge with the bottle design, Leslie explains, was to meet material lightweighting and cost-reduction requirements and still deliver innovation.

A technical study of design elements that hold up under pressure and at specific temperatures revealed that horizontal rings are the most viable design element for carbonated beverage PET bottles, Leslie adds.

“This ran totally contrary to all of the Pepsi equities, which are about long, vertical stripes,” he notes.

Translating the technical benefits of horizontal rings into an appealing bottle design for Pepsi consumers, 4sight developed the globe-and-wave elements. “It was our vision for how to create vertical energy that is contemporary and 'Pepsi-like’ within the real-world constraints of cost and Pepsi’s current filling lines.”

Ron Pence, Pepsi’s senior marketing manager for packaging innovation, confirms that 4sight was able to reinforce the brand image and positioning through a careful balance of creativity and function while adhering to its existing manufacturing standards.

“Our partnership with 4sight drove the [design] vision and facilitated ease of execution for our system,” Pence explains.

A smooth panel around the bottle’s midsection accepts the Pepsi label, the graphics of which will change more than 35 times this year, “to reflect the fast, ever-changing interests of the 'millennial’ generation,” Pepsi says.

More information is available:

4sight, Inc., 212/253-0525. www.4sight.com.