Google last night opened up its social network service Google+ to brands and businesses with the launch of Google+ Pages.

In so doing it finally offers a much needed alternative to Facebook where many brands, which many brands are increasingly making the focus of their social media campaigns.

Already as Marketing reported major UK brands including Burberry, MailOnline, O2, Cadbury and Mumsnet are among the first to launch pages on Google+. Read More »

PepsiCo brand Gatorade is taking its social media strategy very seriously indeed – so much so that it has built a mission control centre replete with screens beaming out brightly-coloured visualisations of what people are saying about it on the likes of Twitter. Read More »

Pepsi has launched a location-enabled iPhone app for US cola drinkers that lets them find Pepsi-serving venues in their immediate vicinity and collect rewards points by visiting them — including free songs. Read More »

No wonder our industry is in such a funk. A while back I stumbled upon the redesign of Tropicana in a store over here. I thought it looked cheap and nasty and so did a few other people after I posted a comment about it on my tumblr. After barely a few months PepsiCo are reverting to the old design. That’s a monumental f**k up.

The same branding company – Arnell – that is currently embroiled in the $1m or is it $10m Pepsi redesign farce is behind the Tropicana work. As I said in my original post I could probably write something very lengthy about the complexities of design and meta language and loads of artsy fartsy nonsense (which it seems Peter Arnell is something of a God at) but fundamentally anyone with a brain can surely see that the old design worked well and the new design looks pale by

comparison.

I suppose marketing departments and agencies exist (and make money) through doing things like this but Tropicana is such a strong brand – why fix something that ain’t broke? If they felt like they needed to freshen the brand up a little why not pour all that money into New Product Development, CSR or do something cool in the digital space?

I don’t get it. Can anyone enlighten me?