Nothing Good Can Come From Pepsi's New Sizes

I was outraged the other day when I saw the following display by Pepsi.  That's right, they decided to start 

selling 1.5-Liter bottles of soda for $1.00. I know it's a rarity these days to find an entire 2-Liter bottle for $1.00, but I can I am sure you will have an even tougher time finding a sale for Pepsi products at lower prices. This whole campaign makes me angry for a few reasons.

The first being that it insults consumer intelligence. You can buy a 2-Liter for $1.25 or a 1.5-Liter for $1.00. It's not a big price difference and yet, after selling millions, it is. Of course we all know that the next step will be doing away with 2-Liters all together and suddenly a 1.5-Liter will be the same price as a 2-Liter. 

Of course, Pepsi may try to explain this away as an attempt to convince consumers to drink less soda. It is after all, so terribly bad for you. The problem I see with this, is that the new design that comes with the new size looks an awful lot like a bottle you'd just pick up and drink out of. It's slim, easy to hold and not too big. It just looks like an over-sized 24oz. plastic bottle, so I doubt anyone is going to consider drinking less soda over this new size. So what is Pepsi's motivation behind bringing out a new size soda bottle?
According to this blog about the new sizes offered by Pepsi (and Coke) the idea is to allow those who are strapped for cash more options to purchase their beverages.
 
I'll leave the comments about that up to you!

Why Pandora Shouldn't Worry About Spotify... Yet

Image courtesy of epicinfo.net.

As a frequent user of Pandora, I was excited to find an invitation to the new music service - Spotify. I started using Spotify earlier this week and found it to be a great mesh of iTunes and Pandora. I could find music and build lists similar to what I would do in iTunes or in the now defunct Winamp, but I didn't have to pay for a song just because I wanted to listen to it once.

I started off playing the suggested "USA" Spotify playlist. While most of the songs played, I had a few problems with songs that simply wouldn't load and wouldn't play, so I skipped over them. In addition, I then also had to go find new music. I was determined to stick with Spotify despite these small problems, until I added one whole album and only two of the songs in the list would play. I know of at least one other person who had this problem, so we'll see if it continues.

Beyond that, I thought Spotify had some great potential, once I took the time to build out an excellent playlist or the service becomes popular enough that I can just steal someone else's playlist. Until one or the other occurs, I've happily gone back to Pandora. Yes, Pandora, with it's sometimes crappy, but continually playing music, and it's creative advertising.

Spotify also has a problem in it's advertising model. I know it's early, but I spent two days looking at the same ad and I feel bad that my accidental click on the ad may have led someone to believe I cared about obtaining a kit used to roll ... well, legally it would be used for cigarettes.

So, while Spotify invites "are like gold," as the site claims, they still have some bugs to work out and the service is much more time consuming than the easy going Pandora. And still, while few people are a fan of ads, Pandora has done something special with their integration of their ads. Pandora's core audience, those busy professionals who don't have time to amass large playlists, will still be using Pandora.  Spotify will simply appeal to a younger audience, all of whom seem to have more time on their hands and a library-like index of music to pull from their heads.