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There were so many disparate movements at work in the 1960s, all converging to define what we now know to be the culture of the era: The youth movement, the hippies, the Civil Rights movement, mod fashions, and of course the dominant culture of the decade fought to preserve the status quo.
Pepsi was obviously a progressive company at the time and knew to appeal to both the teen/youth and Black demographics.
The two ads below were jarring to find. The blocking is nearly IDENTICAL; the ads were probably shot on the same day with the white models and black models shooting one right after the other. That practice is not unheard of (clip in the preceding link from the 1970 movie The Phynx). It's why today there are McDonald's commercials for every target market today.
The two ads above both ran in 1965 - the African-American version in Ebony magazine and the other in more mainstreamed publications.
In either set of ads, it's easy to tell that Pepsi was playing to younger potential customers and selling a lifestyle along with their product. The buttoned-up conservatism of the 1950s was on the way out and the free-wheeling 1960s dictated the way corporations marketed to consumers.
Here are a few Pepsi Generation television commercials from the mid and late 1960s to take a gander at:
And this hilarious article from 1965 demonstrates the pejorative use of the term "Pepsi Generation" as a tongue-in-cheek way to describe restless and delinquent youths.
Click HERE to enlarge.
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