BevBlog

Apparently, the gravitational pull of the sun, the Mona Lisa, the exponential growth of the universe, Earth’s magnetic field and Pepsi’s new logos all have something in common – at least if you believe the design agency that created it.

The Arnell Group’s design has been lampooned as resembling a fat man with a T-shirt riding up his belly, and a “plumber’s crack” as well, but a 27 page .pdf of the agency’s logic recently surfaced through social media site reddit and raised even stranger comparisons.

The document, dated Aug. 4, 2008, takes a historical look at the Pepsi logo and art in general. Art history seems like a stretch in the context of a corporate logo, but we’re with Arnell this far. The group follows up with an interesting examination of the Pepsi logo and the golden ratio. Still with them.

Then, BAM! The Pepsi logo has a magnetic field. Complete with a cross section of the earth showing its various layers, Arnell sets up a direct comparison between magnetic dynamics on the Earth and “smile” variations on the new Pepsi logo. No joke.

Then it gets involved in bendy logic even more: the report suggests that a proper Pepsi display should alter a shopper’s path like the sun’s gravitational field bends light. Let’s leave at the soda jerk the fact that shoppers move at a rate just a wee bit slower than light, (some 670 million miles per hour vs. the shopper’s typical 1 mile per hour pace) and focus on the fact that they’ve created a parallel by which – if you complete the logic – shoppers that get too close to the Pepsi display will be burned to atoms.

The crazy continues with a comparison between an exponentially expanding universe, and a cluster of differently-smiled Pepsi logos in an atom diagram-like arrangement.

And don’t even ask us what this is.

Maybe Arnell should have kept this under wraps. At this point, saying the logo was meant to invoke a jolly fat man may be a more palatable explanation than… than… whatever this is.

Regardless of your political views, we all have to agree that Iraq is currently an unsafe place for a long list of things. That list now includes Coke and Pepsi.

Ayatollah Sheikh Qasim Attayi issued a fatwa calling for all Muslims to cease consuming, selling or importing the cooler case staples.

Despite what it might look like, this isn’t a new strain of anti-Americanism. Though Pepsi and Coke are fantastic symbols of U.S. consumerism, Attayi called for the Fatwa after a study allegedly confirmed that Pepsin – a key ingredient in both drinks – is extracted from pig intestines.

While the idea of pig-intestine extract in our beverage might make most of us queasy, it’s downright forbidden for Muslims to consume pig products. Hence, fatwa.

Apparently, when my guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I should have said “beverage company CEO,” not “a writer.”

Pepsi filed regulatory paperwork Monday that pegged CEO Inda Nooyi’s 2007 compensation at $14.7 million.

Based on that, I don’t want to tell you how many times Nooyi could cover my salary, while still keeping enough change in her pocket to buy her own private island – and let’s not start calculating her income in terms of Ramen noodles. That would get truly depressing.

But I have to give Nooyi credit where credit is due. She garnered $9.83 million of that $14.7 mil from Pepsi stock. That same stock climbed 21.3 percent last year – so somebody’s doing something right at the top of that corporate behemoth.

So, remember kids, when your guidance counselor asks what you want to be when you grow up, say “Pepsi’s CEO.”

For more on Nooyi’s income, click here.

Columnist and Radio and TV commentator Glenn Sacks is disgusted. He’s fired up. He’s urging his readers to call Pepsi and complain – not because of the scantily clad woman dancing in the SoBe Life Water commercial (not to mention the farting lizards) or the corpulent, bare-chested mechanic powering a car via his nipples in their fourth quarter Amp Energy commercial, but because a special effects team inflicted on-screen pain to pop star Justin Timberlake (speaking of nipples) in the second quarter’s Pepsi Stuff commercial.

The commercial featured Timberlake flying across a busy street and bashing into a mailbox post on his way to a young, attractive female Pepsi drinker who sucks dry her bottle of Pepsi in order to earn points to buy a Justin Timberlake mp3.

When Timberlake arrived, a flat panel TV crashed over his head and knocked him out. The girl’s father chugged his own share of Pepsi to earn the points for that.

“I understand slapstick humor but this was way over the line,” noted Sacks. “Timberlake is in severe pain in the ad, and gets painfully whacked in the nuts on three separate occasions. All because some pretty girl is sucking him in by drinking her Pepsi.”

To which reply: yeah, something about this definitely sucks.

To see Sacks’ column, click here.

To see the ad, click here.