Pepsi: Success with the Ladies

Long time readers will recall last year's week-long look at Pepsi's decade-spanning ad campaign. At that time I posited that during the 50's, unlike its main competitor Coca Cola, Pepsi's marketing strategy was to target women specifically.


Imagine my delight upon discovering the oddball ad below in a 1955 Saturday Evening Post:

"For the third year in a row," reads the body copy, "Pepsi is talking to women in women's language. They talk to women about women. In terms of modern woman's good taste, good health, good figure - and good sense."


See guys? That's why women are always complaining we don't communicate with them. Who knew they had their own language?!

But seriously, this ad not only confirms what we were previously discussing about Pepsi, it raises an interesting point about how advertisers of the 50's were beginning to realize that America had changed. That small town, traditional mom n' pop Norman Rockwell generation was giving way to an emerging post-war urban society.

Advertisers would need to navigate the complexities of this atomic age America to appeal to the emerging sophistication of its wants and desires.


Next week, using an article from an old issue of Art Director and Studio News as our guide, we'll examine how the ad industry strategized to appeal to women and men.

And we'll see if very much has changed in the last 50 years!

My Pepsi Ads Flickr set.