Chaos VS Simplicity VS Femininity

Upon visiting the Pepsi, IKEA, and Dove websites, I had one definite conclusion: all three sites are extremely different. They each obviously have very different audiences that they are trying to reach.  Whether their attempts are successful, I don’t know.

The first site I opened was the Pepsi one. My first thought? Ooohhh, pretty colors. Followed by: what the heck is going on here?  Pepsi’s home page is a covered in different, brightly colored boxes.  It’s all crammed together and feels very chaotic. Just looking at the home page alone, I have to wonder, does this marketing strategy actually work?  While there are various Pepsi logos spread across the page, most of the page is taken up with the colored boxes with Tweets about X-Factor. Someone searching for information about the product itself has to go digging deeper into the site.  The bright colors and use of popular media indicates that the intended audience is for teenagers through young adults, but would these people be interested in the product behind X-Factor? Because it seems to me, this site is promoting X-Factor more than trying to sell Pepsi. I’m sure there’s some kind of brilliant marketing strategy behind this. Maybe the “You like this? We like that too!” strategy.

I visited the IKEA site next. It has a totally different feeling than Pepsi.  My first thought was that it looked a lot like the set up of Amazon or EBay. It actually seems to be trying to sell products, rather than just promote itself through popular media.  With the bright but still plain colors, I’m guessing the intended audience is older than Pepsi’s.  It’s not too old though, since some of the products on the home page appeal to me.  I noticed that on the big picture of various products, there are some fun patterns on pillows and lampshades.  This suggests that while the intended audience is older than teenagers, college students and other young adults may still be included.  The fonts and layouts are also very simplistic and much easier to follow than the pure chaos of the Pepsi page.

Finally, I checked out the Dove page, which feels like the middle ground between Pepsi and IKEA. Like IKEA, Dove also shows some of their products on the home page. However, the site also seems less product based like the Pepsi site.  For example, there are sections for tips, videos, and games.  While Pepsi and IKEA’s intended audience was for any gender, Dove is clearly geared towards women.  The whites and simple colors of the site (plus the large picture of a woman) only emphasize this fact.  They do have some products for men but the advertisement still says ‘your football fan.’  Dove is also very simplistic compared to the busy-ness of the Pepsi site.