Meet the integration guru who invented the future
There was a time in the past when the future was not yet real. It was before Marty McFly and Doc raced through decades in a beat-up DeLorean, before hoverboards, before self-lacing shoes.
There was a time in the past when the future was not yet real. It was before Marty McFly and Doc raced through decades in a beat-up DeLorean, before hoverboards, before self-lacing shoes.
It also was a time before Pepsi Perfect.
On Oct. 21, 2015—the very day Michael J. Fox's character in Back to the
Future II arrived from the 1980s into what is nearly now the
present—Pepsi will, for the first time, sell bottles of Pepsi Perfect.
The fictional soft drink, rich in vitamins in the movie (and now rich
in pop culture), became a non-Coca-Cola classic, at a time when the
red-and-white rival ruled Hollywood.
But the tale of how Pepsi Perfect arrived in "Back to the Future II" is a story in its own right.
When the 1980s began, Pepsi hadn't yet entered the realm of product integration for movies. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, had been working its way into movies
since the 1916 silent film The Mystery of The Leaping Fish. By the
'80s, Coke had built a full wing of its business around product tie-ins.
"Coke had had a product placement program for 20 years," said Bradford
Brown, co-founder of Davie Brown Entertainment, the company that has
handled placements for Pepsi since the beginning. "And for every movie
there's a bottle in, it's always Coke. It's only Coke."
Placing Pepsi
In 1982, Coca-Cola acquired Columbia Pictures, just a few weeks before launching Diet Coke,
making the probability of more Coca Cola even more ubiquitous in
Hollywood. Brown, who had become friends with Pepsi's then-president
Roger Enrico, told Enrico that Pepsi should consider launching its own
initiative to enter the big screen.
"I told him we should look at it almost as a defensive strategy," Brown said.
Enrico gave him the green light, and Brown started working by himself
in 1982 under the name Pepsi-Cola Entertainment Group. He worked
directly with Pepsi for three years before taking on Jim Davie as a
partner and changing the business' name in 1987 to Davie Brown. (Davie
Brown was later acquired by Omnicom, and is now a part of Omnicom's The
Marketing Arm.)
Brown already had some experience in the film industry working side
jobs while at the University of California-Los Angeles. The first big
placement Pepsi landed was in 1983's Flashdance. The scene with Pepsi in
it was a hit, giving Brown a big win that allowed him to take more
chances with other integrations.
"I was golden from then on," he said. "Nobody ever said: 'What are you
doing? Why are you spending money on this? Why are you traveling here?'
They thought I had the magic. I like to keep them thinking that one."
Enter McFly.
Brown had struck up a friendship with the prop master for "Back to the
Future," which resulted in the first film including references to Pepsi,
such as Marty's conversation with a confused 1950s soda jerker who
didn't understand his order of a Pepsi Free (soon to be rebranded Diet
Pepsi).
There was also a scene where McFly drinks out of a vintage Pepsi bottle
Brown had collected over the years. In fact, Brown had quite a
collection. It was a hobby that ultimately spanned 25 years, as he
visited swap meets and worked with Pepsi collectors to buy old bottles,
vending machines, caps and signs.
This war chest of soda memorabilia was beneficial to prop and set
decorators interested in using Pepsi products in films. Brown says there
have now been more than 500 occasions where Pepsi is scene in a shot
for at least an instant (or a "blink").
By the time "Back to the Future II" began to film, Pepsi had given
Brown a zero-base budget, allowing him to spend whatever he needed to
spend. So they set out to create a Pepsi for the next millennium.
Future Perfect
The name came from a day when they were thinking about what the Pepsi
of the future might be like. They wanted a product that had its
traditional benefits, but also included more nutrients.
"So it would be the perfect meal," Brown said. "And that led us to,
'Gee, if it's a perfect meal, why don't we call it Pepsi Perfect?"
The original Pepsi Perfect bottles for the movie were made by a father
and son duo operating out of a garage workshop. Brown said four or five
dozen were needed for the movie, costing around $1,200 a piece. Brown
said he knew the filmmakers were going to use the bottles somehow, but
didn't know how visible they would be.
"But when the filmmakers saw the bottle, they liked how different it
was," he said. "They almost created the scene around it. You couldn't
have scripted it any better, quite frankly." >>> Adweek.com
