The iPod Generation

Hip and youth-oriented, Apple’s iPod advertising follows a path originally set by Pepsi’s “Pepsi Generation” ad campaign. Originating in the 1960s, that campaign was one of the first to ignore a product’s attributes and instead highlight the lifestyle of the product’s consumers.

Along with inaugurating lifestyle advertising, the clever twist of the “Pepsi Generation” was this: Young people responded because it talked to them; older people responded because it invoked feeling young again, if just for the trivial choice of which cola to drink.

Now fast-forward 40 years, to the recent past. Lifestyle advertising is commonplace, although less so in the tech-product marketplace. In 2003, iPod ads showed youthful silhouettes losing themselves in music. The ads said nothing about the product, only about the lifestyles of the people who own it.

Then in 2004, Pepsi and Apple partnered on a promotion where consumers could win Apple iTunes downloads by purchasing Pepsi. Recall that Steve Jobs once taunted then-Pepsi CEO John Sculley about “selling sugar water.” Jobs apparently learned some lessons from Sculley’s business nevertheless.