For Those Who Think Young

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Mad Men is far and away my favorite show on television. A season two episode, called "For Those Who Think Young" featured the copywriters at the fictional 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper struggling to come up with ideas to market Pepsi to the under 25 demographic.

"No one under 25 drinks coffee anymore... Just Pepsi. They pour it on their Frosted Flakes."

That was clearly hyperbole, but unsurprisingly, Mad Men remained completely authentic to the era with the title and subject matter of the episode. Pepsi, in the early 1960s ran ads containing the copy "now it's Pepsi - for those who think young".

Of course, the Pepsi print ads and commericals were very mainstreamed, but in magazines like Ebony, Jet, and Sepia, and local dailies like the Chicago Defender, ran complimentary ads featuring models of color.

I like that Pepsi didn't define too rigidly what it meant to think young. It could have been a day with your children, your significant other, on campus, at the park....

And here is the original "For those who think young" commercial from the 1960s.

And, of course, the contemporary Britney Spears reboot. What's interesting is that Britney does a medley of Pepsi jingles from the 1960s, including the Pepsi Generation ads, of which I have several featuring African American models from Black publications. I'll save those for another day and give them their own post.

Here are some other Pepsi "For Those Who Think Young" ads to compare to the ones above. Frankly, I like them all!

Thanks for reading!

Up next: Part 3 in the vintage Black weddings series featuring photos of African American weddings from the late 1950s, vintage 1960s Firestone ads, and clips and screencaps from Why Do Fools Fall in Love?. (Halle Berry looks great in vintage, by the way. Her wardrobe in that movie was AMAZING!)

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