I remember when Charli XCX asked if she could put two Pepsi logos on her chest, you can guess where.

“Is she making fun of us?” the client asked us in a sidebar convo.

“I don’t think so. She told me it would be, like, super punk?” I said. “To own the fact that you are paying for her artistic cache, so to speak. Like she wants to embrace the fact that she’s selling her song and image to Pepsi. She mentioned the Sex Pistols on the call. And told us she’d have her own stylist handle the wardrobe…so no, she’s not making fun of you.”

“I don’t think we’re comfortable with it. I could check with legal but I’m not even sure we’re allowed to put the logo…on that part of the body.”

And that is the story of how our Pepsi clients became the first in corporate history to ask for less of their logo in a commercial.

These spots were for the Grammys, launching Pepsi’s ‘Out of the Blue’ music platform.

Fallout Boy did not ask to do anything provocative with the logo. But they gave it their all on the day nonetheless. And it was genuinely cool to get to shoot a performance inside an iconic record pressing plant.

For the radio—wait, where are you going? it's good radio!—I interviewed both of the artists we shot for the tv spots. We used the stems for the licensed tracks (the isolated instrumental and vocal tracks) and I asked the artists about all the different parts of the songs. We brought it all together in the mix, creating some really cool behind-the-scenes type content. Please note: this was before Song Exploder was a thing!

Did we also make a :15 where someone is happy to take a sip of Pepsi?

You know we did! This rounded out the Grammy Night media buy, and they all aired plenty of times thereafter. What I like about this one is we still tried to locate some truth in the storytelling. You know what’s awesome? When you’re in a crowd at a concert and you’re thirsty as hell and your date somehow finds their way back to you amidst all those people and puts a cold drink in your hand. And it wasn’t accidental we tied that feeling in with the language of Real Sugar Pepsi being “back.”