Pepsi wants you to be 'More Happy'

New York: The marketing executives at Pepsi want you to be “More Happy”.

That, at least, is the new slogan for the soft drink, which corporate parent PepsiCo Inc unveiled in an advertising campaign this week in the lead up to this year's Super Bowl XLI, the National Football League championship game.

The slogan is the first new tagline Pepsi has adopted since 2003, when the company adopted “Pepsi. It's the cola”.

Pepsi's main rival Coca-Cola Co has had “Welcome to the Coke Side of Life” as its tagline since December 2005.

“One of the nice things about the word 'happy' is it's really multidimensional,” said Russell Weiner, vice president of cola marketing at PepsiCo.

“When you show consumers, they bring up words like invigorating, uplifting, exciting, fun. The beauty of the word happy is it kind of captures all of them,” Weiner added.

One marketing expert said Pepsi could be taking a chance with their new tagline.

“I don't see ‘More Happy’ as being an especially breakthrough kind of slogan that will work its way deeply into the consumer consciousness,” University of Michigan marketing professor Rajeev Batra said.

“Coke had slogans that haven't resonated all that strongly and this one from Pepsi might fall into that category. It all depends on the execution of it,” Batra said.

As part of the campaign to promote its new slogan, PepsiCo will introduce new can designs.

Since 1898, Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo has changed the design of its can a total of 10 times.

This year, it plans to launch 35 new designs, with a new one introduced every three weeks. Each come with a hyperlink that sends consumers to a themed website.