Did I Really See Pepsi?
During Jenny Robinson’s presentation, there was one brief image that stayed in my mind: in Twister (1996), a group of people cut up Pepsi cans, attach them to a scientific device, and send them into a tornado.
I had never watched the full film. Without knowing the context, the image sounded almost absurd. Why would a scientific experiment depend on a collection of soft-drink cans? Why did they have to be Pepsi cans? And why had this become such a classic example of product placement?
After the class, I searched for the scene and read more about its place within the story.
In the film, a group of storm chasers are trying to send a device called Dorothy into a tornado. Dorothy contains many small sensors, but their earlier attempts fail because the sensors cannot travel through the tornado as intended. Eventually, the characters cut aluminium Pepsi cans into small fins and attach them to the sensors, allowing the wind to lift and carry them.
Once I understood the scene, I thought the answer was quite simple.
This was a good product placement.
The cans are not sitting untouched on a table while the camera repeatedly returns to the logo. They are picked up, cut apart and given another function. Something made to contain an ordinary drink becomes part of a scientific instrument. The characters do not wait for a perfect component to arrive from a laboratory. They look at what is already around them and find another possibility within it.
A Pepsi can is ordinary, inexpensive and immediately recognisable. It belongs to supermarkets, convenience stores, vending machines, cars and everyday life. When it becomes part of Dorothy, it brings this familiarity into the experiment. The characters are scientists, but their solution does not feel completely distant from ordinary experience. Their success comes not only from specialist knowledge, but also from observation, improvisation and the ability to use a very simple material.
In this sense, the cans also participate in the construction of the characters. They support a practical and hands-on kind of heroism. It is not the heroism of owning the most advanced or expensive equipment. It is the ability to pick up something almost anyone could find and recognise a possibility that was not visible before.
If the same function had been performed by an expensive luxury product with no natural relationship to the device, the meaning of the scene might have changed completely. The product could still appear clearly and repeatedly, but instead of helping me understand the characters, it might make me wonder why it had been forced into the film.
But the longer I thought about the scene, the less simple my original answer became.
From a physical point of view, the experiment does not require Pepsi. Almost any aluminium drink can could perform the same function. The material is necessary to the characters’ solution. The brand is not.
So what exactly does Pepsi add?
Inside the story, the cans are pieces of metal. They are useful because they are light, available and easy to cut. Outside the story, they are repeated images of a commercial brand. The same object is therefore doing two things at once: helping the characters solve a problem and helping Pepsi enter the film.
Perhaps the placement only works if these two functions do not separate too clearly. The audience needs to see enough of Pepsi for the brand to benefit, but not so much that the story stops and the advertisement takes over.
Then I found something that changed my question again.
In 2007, Moonhee Yang and David Roskos-Ewoldsen published a study that used this specific Twister scene as experimental material. They divided brand placements into different levels: products appearing as background props, products being used by major characters, and products becoming instrumental to the story. The Pepsi cans belonged to the third category because they directly contributed to the deployment of Dorothy.
Across the study, brands that played an important role in the story were generally recognised more successfully than brands that only appeared in the background or were simply used by a character.
Pepsi was the exception.
Participants who watched the Twister clip recognised Pepsi only at approximately chance level. The researchers suggested that the scene may have been too dark for the branding to be clearly distinguished. The danger of the approaching tornado may also have drawn attention away from the labels. Most interestingly, viewers may have understood that the characters were using “cans” without processing them more specifically as “Pepsi cans” (Yang & Roskos-Ewoldsen 2007).
This result returned me to the same object, but it no longer looked the same.
The Pepsi cans were important enough to help solve the central problem of the film, but apparently not clear enough for many participants to identify the brand. The audience may have understood what the cans were doing without consciously recognising whose cans they were.
If that is true, did the placement fail?
If Pepsi wanted viewers to watch the scene and later name the brand, chance-level recognition would seem like a poor result. But conscious recognition is not the only possible form of influence. A brand may become slightly more familiar without a viewer being able to remember where that familiarity began. Its colours or logo may become easier to process the next time they appear. The viewer may have seen Pepsi without ever stopping to form the complete thought: “This is Pepsi, and Pepsi is advertising to me.”
I do not think this should be described simply as subliminal advertising. The cans were not hidden below the threshold of perception. They were visible. But visibility does not mean that something becomes the centre of conscious attention. The viewers were also watching the characters work, understanding the experiment and waiting for an F5 tornado to arrive. Pepsi entered the same visual field without necessarily becoming the most important thing within it.
Perhaps this is one possible form of success.
The brand appears often enough to leave a trace, but not strongly enough to replace the story. It enters the viewer’s experience without demanding that the viewer stop and think about the advertisement.
However, I cannot prove that this happened in the Twister scene. Yang and Roskos-Ewoldsen’s wider study found that brand exposure could influence implicit memory and later choices, but it did not prove that this specific Pepsi placement caused viewers to buy Pepsi without knowing why. Failing to recognise the brand does not automatically mean that a hidden effect occurred. It may indicate implicit processing, or it may simply indicate that the brand was not processed at all.
When I searched for responses to the scene, the reactions I could see most clearly were often negative. Some viewers questioned why every available can had to be Pepsi. Others remembered the scene precisely because the placement seemed excessive or unrealistic. Even Roger Ebert commented on the strange convenience of every can being the same brand.
At first, this appeared to be evidence that the placement had failed for at least part of the audience. It had become too visible. Instead of remaining inside the story, the commercial decision behind it had revealed itself.
But the visibility of these reactions may also be misleading.
Irritation gives people a reason to speak. Familiarity usually does not.
Someone who feels interrupted by an advertisement may immediately write a review, make a joke or ask why every can is Pepsi. Someone who becomes slightly more familiar with Pepsi may never recognise that anything has changed. They are unlikely to post online about an effect they cannot identify.
At the same time, their silence cannot be treated as proof that the placement worked. A silent viewer may have developed greater familiarity with Pepsi, or may have experienced no meaningful effect at all. The comments I found only show the responses that people were able and motivated to express. They do not reveal every response that may have occurred.
The problem becomes even more difficult when I think about sales.
Pepsi can count how many products were sold after the release of Twister, but a sale does not carry a label explaining which image, memory or advertisement produced it. The film existed alongside other Pepsi advertisements, promotions, prices, shop displays and existing consumer habits. Even if sales increased, it would be difficult to isolate the part caused by this particular scene. If sales did not visibly change, the placement might still have contributed to familiarity over a much longer period through cinema screenings, television broadcasts, home video and later streaming.
Pepsi may have accepted this uncertainty. The company did not necessarily need to prove that every additional sale came directly from Twister. Association with a major film, repeated exposure and a connection with the protagonists’ successful invention may already have been considered valuable.
But I cannot know exactly what Pepsi expected. I could not find public evidence showing who originally proposed the idea, how the agreement was negotiated, or what measurements Pepsi used afterwards. It would therefore be inaccurate to claim that the company deliberately designed the placement to influence the audience without their awareness.
What I can say is that the placement produced several different kinds of possible response, and each one would require a different method of measurement.
Eye tracking could show whether viewers looked directly at the Pepsi logo, when they first noticed it and how long their gaze remained there. A recognition test could show whether they knew they had seen Pepsi. An implicit memory or product-choice task could examine effects that they could not clearly report. Interviews could help explain whether they understood the cans as advertisements, ordinary materials or evidence of the characters’ resourcefulness. Sales data could record what people eventually bought, but not necessarily why they bought it.
None of these measurements would reveal the complete response by itself.
This brought me back to Jenny’s presentation. At the beginning, I assumed that measurement meant finding evidence of whether media had affected an audience. Now I think the more difficult question is what kind of effect a particular method allows us to see.
If viewers understood the function of the cans but could not consciously identify Pepsi, did the placement fail? Or did it succeed precisely because the brand entered the scene without completely taking over their attention?
Perhaps the answer depends on what Pepsi wanted, what the researcher chose to measure and what the viewer was able to express.
So the question I want to keep from this example is no longer simply whether the Pepsi placement was successful.
It is:
To what extent can we call a media strategy successful when its most visible effects may be negative, its quieter effects may be difficult to recognise, and its eventual influence on behaviour may be almost impossible to separate from everything else the audience has seen?
References
Babin, B.J., Herrmann, J.-L., Kacha, M. & Babin, L.A. 2021, ‘The effectiveness of brand placements: A meta-analytic synthesis’, International Journal of Research in Marketing, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 1017–1033.
Boerman, S.C., van Reijmersdal, E.A. & Neijens, P.C. 2015, ‘Using eye tracking to understand the effects of brand placement disclosure types in television programs’, Journal of Advertising, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 196–207.
Dens, N., De Pelsmacker, P., Wouters, M. & Purnawirawan, N. 2012, ‘Do you like what you recognize? The effects of brand placement prominence and movie plot connection on brand attitude as mediated by recognition’, Journal of Advertising, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 35–53.
Ebert, R. 1996, ‘Twister’, RogerEbert.com, 10 May.
Russell, C.A. 2002, ‘Investigating the effectiveness of product placements in television shows: The role of modality and plot connection congruence on brand memory and attitude’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 306–318.
Yang, M. & Roskos-Ewoldsen, D.R. 2007, ‘The effectiveness of brand placements in the movies: Levels of placements, explicit and implicit memory, and brand-choice behavior’, Journal of Communication, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 469–489.
WIP Update
The first short film is now approaching its final stage. This panoramic composition study maps how the party sequence will move across a single extended image. In the animation, the camera will travel from left to right, following the main character as they emerge from the crowd and move towards the bathroom. The scene is organised into three spatial layers: the hands closest to the camera, including the hand holding a wine glass, form the foreground; the main character occupies the midground; and the surrounding crowd and bathroom setting form the background. This structure helps me plan the depth, movement and transition between the crowded party and the bathroom.