Pepsi packaged counterculture values to sell soda to mainstream America

Evidence

But Pepsi had greater success with the “Live–Give” campaign, playing on more appealing countercultural values, like a return to natural, simple pleasures and living in peace. Here was consumption coaxed with an anti-consumerist ethos; it was Pepsi selling the counterculture to mainstream America, as Leary and others had only aspired to do. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 555

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the attention-industry theme of commodifying rebellion; extends the history of capital absorbing countercultural critique.
• SEED: Could become an essay on how capitalism neutralizes anti-consumerist movements by selling their aesthetics back.
• XREF: connects to: Pepsi’s innovation was implying consumption transforms the buyer’s identity — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 554; Pepsi commercialized Marcuse’s vision of unrepressed liberated life — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 560

Broader Connections

• Pepsi commercialized Marcuse’s vision of unrepressed liberated life #expands (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 560