Marketing in the News: Pepsi launches new lemon-lime soda with Starry
Sometime in within your life you have heard of the two predominately large soda corporations on Coca-Cola and Pepsi. With these two brands, they are constantly competing to one-up each other in the various soda flavors markets. It is no different when it comes to the lemon-lime department and just recently Pepsi released Starry. For myself I've seen ads about this new introduced flavor from Pepsi on Instagram and Twitter within the last couple of months. I became interested in this particular marketing product because I actually like lemon lime soda so the announcement of a new version made me intrigued to see what this about.
With a whole new soda flavor, Pepsi is attempting to try to compete with Coca-Cola in the lemon lime section of soda. According to the article, "Its current lemon-lime soda offering Sierra Mist, which launched in 2000, has faced dwindling sales over the past decade and may be discontinued". With Sierra Mist on the verge of being discontinued the brand thought their best intentions were to revamp this old 2000's brand soda to market to a younger audience. Pepsi is doing this by having their, "promotional materials for Starry referring the drink as a “purpose-driven brand built for Generation Z” and having “a crisp, refreshing formula with a bite". This marketing is intended to promote interest towards Generation Z to consider their product when you are looking to buy a lemon lime soda. The brand also highlighted that, "Starry’s packaging said the soda is a “fun escape” that also takes “steps on sustainability.” Further projecting to their new targeted group of buyers.
Pepsi's value proposition has remained the same for years now, the come off as a innovative company that is always looking to deliver a level of growth unmatched in their industry. From having Cindy Crawford to now having relevant faces such as Cardi B and Steve Carell; Pepsi is determined to be an innovative company within their industry adding recognizing faces of this generation with a new product of the lemon lime soda adds great to their value proposition for this new generation of people.
The marketing relevance for Pepsi with Starry is that its a new product launch. With this they approached this product directly to a niche of the Gen Z population trying to attempt to promote what Pepsi belives they would value. Pepsi was in some sort of a crisis management with, "Sierra Mist only had 0.1% dollar share of carbonated soft drinks as of last October, compared to 6.9% for Sprite". Acting quickly to this report is imperative for this company.
The challenge that Pepsi is having to deal with is appealing to this new generation of consumers, specifically in the lemon lime area of soda. Spirte notoriously is the leader in this field and Pepsi has to find ways of competing with them. This is why they are producing a new product; getting people to talk about this new flavor and getting them excited to try it.
If I'm being honest I really don't see the appeal of Pepsi's marketing approach with Starry. Just creating a new name for your product for a flavor that's just lemon lime doesn't make sense to me. It isn't really unique along with that all your promotion said was “purpose-driven brand built for Generation Z”. Like what does this mean, saying this one thing but it doesn't mean much in the long run. I feel like their is no appeal in my opinion.
If I was in charge I would try to add something to the flavor that isn't just lemon lime. Adding another flavor creates an idea in people questioning to buy it on what it would taste like. Also their design for the bottle is pretty bland, it doesn't catch an eye. I would simply add another design aspect to it.
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