Soda Inspired Dog Names

Throughout history, dogs have beer used as a marketing tool to make every product from cars to food seem more down to earth, family-oriented, or even adventurous. Regardless of their actual affiliation with the products themselves, dogs are often a quick reference for the human brain to associate things with something personal and reliable, just like our canine companions. 

One of the earliest and most famous was Nipper, the curious dog sitting in front of the phonograph that quickly became the universal symbol for RCA Victor. Over 50 years later, a Basset Hound named Jason helped the Hush Puppies shoe company rise to prominence in mid-century America. Bud Light followed suit just decades later with the help of Spuds Mackenzie, the campaign so successful they had to retire the dog because it was taking over the brand’s image. Then, of course came Gidget, the stereotypical Taco Bell dog, as well as Smudgie, a symbol of the Target brand since 1999. 

But one dog seems to have escape much fanfare, even though he still graces cans of root beer everywhere: Dog. 

In 2002, Mug Root Beer, a smaller soft drink brand owned by Pepsi-Cola that is second-most popular on the market for its flavor profile, decided to infuse a bit of classic advertising tactics back into his campaigns by adding in a character created strictly for the brand. Although it had been considered a dated technique that was largely abandoned until the Spuds Mackenzie era, it began to see a resurgence on Madison Ave and the idea was quickly scooped up by Pepsi in an effort to gain a larger market share by appealing to a younger and more dog-friendly audience. 

After experimenting with wild animals and even mythical creatures, the company, working alongside the creative team at Character, the very same that helped create and develop the California Raisins, finally settled on a Bulldog. Although to the outsider or surface observer it seems the two would be an odd fit, but given the identity Pepsi wanted to give Mug, it was actually a fantastic fit, as the Bulldog epitomized much of what they saw in the root beer. It was powerful, yet mellow and laid-back, old-fashioned but still interesting and best of all, the Bulldog is best known for its face, AKA its mug, making it a perfect fit. 

The newly-conceived branding worked and even developed into a larger concept overall, allowing Pepsi to design comic book-style animations around it, compelling their audience to interact with their soda’s new front-dog outside of just on the store shelves. While the fanfare around the change certainly fell to the wayside recently, there’s something to be said for the illustrated Bulldog named Dog that still graces the bottles and cans of the company’s root beer 16 years later.