PepsiCo has launched its first corporate brand campaign, House of Brands, after a week long social media stunt that led audiences to believe the global food and beverage company was preparing to change its name.
The campaign uses the popularity of PepsiCo’s individual brands to draw greater attention to the parent company, which says only 18 per cent of people currently connect its corporate name with brands beyond Pepsi.
The build up began with cryptic posts from PepsiCo suggesting that its brands were planning something unusual. Subsequent videos turned the idea into a running joke, showing characters representing Cheetos, Doritos, Lay’s, Gatorade and Quaker debating possible names for the company, including Cheetos Co, Lay’s Co and Quaker Co.
Brandspur Brand News reports that the company eventually revealed that PepsiCo was not changing its name. Instead, the elaborate tease was designed to introduce House of Brands, a campaign intended to strengthen public awareness of the company behind its extensive portfolio of consumer brands.
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PepsiCo said its portfolio includes more than 500 brands, reaching consumers more than one billion times daily around the world. Its better known names include Gatorade, Doritos, Lay’s, Quaker, Mountain Dew, Lipton and Ocean Spray, as well as newer additions such as Poppi and Simply NKD.
The campaign forms part of a wider effort by PepsiCo to give its corporate identity greater visibility alongside the brands consumers already know. The company has been refreshing its visual identity and increasing the presence of the parent brand across packaging, advertising and sponsorship activities.
PepsiCo is also pursuing what it describes as a OnePepsiCo approach, aimed at creating a stronger connection between its different businesses and brands under a common corporate identity.
The latest campaign also comes amid changes to the company’s global marketing operations, including a partnership with Publicis to redesign its media model.
By making the supposed name change the central joke of the campaign, PepsiCo turned speculation about its corporate identity into a way of introducing the wider House of Brands message and drawing attention to the relationship between its parent company and the products consumers encounter every day.
