I was walking in Brooklyn a few days after New Year’s when I came upon a large poster displaying the new Pepsi logo on a bright, bold background. Strangely, it reminded me of the Obama O. The similarity has been widely discussed on branding and political blogs like Ad Age and Politico. Even CNN covered the issue on January 12th, noting that “Obama is a winning product and he won on the promise of hope. So now companies, like Pepsi, want to use the same message in their campaigns.”

The Obama logo was launched almost exactly two years ago, on February 10th, 2007. Obama’s O has been highly visible since then, and any new logo with similar shape, colors and lines is going to strongly evoke the familiar Obama one (go to barackobama.com to see it in the layout).

The dusty quality to the blue in the new Pepsi logo and on the cans is very evocative of the blue on much of Obama’s campaign materials. The new Pepsi logo is a simple design, too – it reminds consumers of the logos for Korean Air, Girl Scouts, and Major League Baseball as well. The resemblance between the logos is likely unintentional, but the ad campaign is a different story.

Pepsi’s VP of brands, Frank Cooper, addressed these allegations in a press conference January 29th (bracketed text mine). “We believe there is a cultural movement happening; a spirit of optimism, a thirst [get it?] for positive change, and an intense desire for active participation. That’s what president Obama tapped into. And anyone can tap into that.”

Pepsi definitely wants to tap it. Their campaign features the new logo as an O in positive words and phrases such as “yes you can,” “hooray,” “hope,” and “optimism.”

They’re not the only ones – Ikea (Embrace Change ’09), Starbucks (Are you in? Volunteer promotion) and Ben & Jerry’s (Yes Pecan! ice cream) have also played off the political fervor with election-themed product promotion. Perhaps this isn’t too strange; NPR has noted that a similar thing, if on a smaller scale, happened with some of Reagan’s imagery and campaign messages in the 1980s. Reagan probably approved.

I was originally bothered by Pepsi’s blatant appropriation of campaign imagery. I thought it disingenuous for a company like Pepsi to appropriate Obama’s imagery of hope, change and empowerment. It means something to me, something antithetical to the goal of corporate profit.

But the nice thing about the words “hope” and “change” is that they can mean whatever you want them to. That’s what made them excellent campaign slogans. I realized that I projected meaning onto Obama’s campaign imagery to suit myself. In an article on marketing in Obama’s campaign, Ad Age said, “Obama latched on to “Change” early on and did not veer from the selling proposition or the messaging… the branding was simple and consistent.” Why shouldn’t Pepsi use their model?

A political campaign is just an ad campaign with a more important product. The consumer is manipulated towards an end either way. Unless you believe that ends justify means, the importance of the product shouldn’t ennoble the act of marketing. Is there any difference between Pepsi creating brand loyalty through good design and Obama doing the same thing? Maybe the difference is that I’m a Coke-drinking liberal, but better Coke than Koolaid, right?