New Pepsi logo’s startling origins revealed.

I’ve already Tweeted about it, but I can’t help but add to the web-wide snickering about the leaked presentation that was created by Arnell, the ad agency that designed the underwhelming (to put it kindly) new Pepsi logo.

I first read about the debacle this morning here, and later in the day ran across several online articles clowning Arnell — most notably here and here. (Download the presentation at any of these sites. Seriously. Do it. No, REALLY, do it.)

Now I’ve worked with some advertising folks so full of their own bullshit it was coming out of their ears. But nothing I’ve encountered comes close to comparing to the audacity and clueless, tone-deaf arrogance of the creative team that put this presentation together. Now, to be fair, that’s partly because most of the creative directors I’ve worked with lack the technical skill, knowledge and imagination to aspire to bullshit of this magnitude. The bullshit I’ve witnessed is strictly garden variety stuff: buzzword-studded presentations, insanely unrealistic projections of media interest, stuff like that. But this — this is some truly inspired bullshit.

Pepsi must have thought so, too, because they paid millions of dollars for a derivative, flat and forgettable logo based on this presentation. It’s hard not to wonder what the reactions of those executives will be when they run across the hundreds of  snarky, incredulous, un-uh-no-they-didn’t responses to this presentation that are cropping up everywhere on the web as I type. Oh, they’ll probably rationalize it (when you spend that kind of cash on something, it ain’t easy to accept that you basically got got, as the kids say). More interesting would be the reactions of the Arnell team. Do they really believe in this? And if so, are they an anomaly in the ad business, or is this kind of byzantine, smoke-and-mirrors shit the norm at big-money agencies these days?