John McQuaid

The Obama campaign was both relentless and brilliant in its branding efforts, creating not just an appealing design but a cool visual sensibility. Now Pepsi has unveiled a new design that cribs directly from the Obama logo. Yes, Pepsi has long had a circular, red-white-and-blue logo. But the clean lines and the “O” iconography are pretty obvious allusions to the Obama design, down to the small “O” (in the case of Diet Pepsi, it’s a zero) that echoes the larger symbol. It’s evidently an attempt to hitch Pepsi’s star to the “change” idea – after all, Pepsi has styled itself “the choice of a new generation” since the 1980s. Maybe it will work, who knows? But it does show how Barack Obama’s influence already extends beyond politics – he’s on his way to becoming a full-fledged cultural phenomenon.