Pepsi Country Can (Concept)
This is an independent case study. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or produced for release by PepsiCo.
The brief was a speculative limited edition Country Can series celebrating the culture of one country, designed for a Gen Z audience. With Indonesia as the focus, the aim was a series that feels locally authentic but globally resonant.
Two directions were developed, each told across three cans and carried into merchandise and activation.
CONCEPT 1
RESEARCH Research started with what holds a nation of thousands of islands together. Values like gotong royong,
community and pride came up again and again, along with storytelling traditions such as batik, wayang and folklore.
Food was the strongest thread, and I discovered a constant: the banana leaf food is often wrapped in.
MOODBOARD AND DRAFTING References were collected around the banana leaf itself, its folds, veins and greens.
Early rounds explored how the leaf wraps around the Pepsi globe, and how the vein connects when the three cans sit side by side.
CONCEPT 1: ONE LEAF, ONE NATION
The banana leaf crosses islands, regions and walks of life, wrapping the same meals in different hands.
The Wrap: the everyday worker and the everyday meal, nasi bungkus.
The Gathering: liwetan, leaves laid end to end, bonding over one table.
The Celebration: tumpeng, the leaf as the stage for life’s milestones.
MERCHANDISE The food, miniaturised into leather charms, and the leaf embroidered across caps and jackets.
Cool, collectible apparel that connects to Gen Z.
CONCEPT 2
RESEARCH A Country of Biodiversity. Indonesia spans three biogeographic zones, Asiatic, Wallacea and Australis, each home to creatures found nowhere else. This direction leans into pride rather than conservation: only here, only us.
MOODBOARD Wayang craft and linocut illustration set the visual language, with the hand-cut quality of wayang carried into each creature.
CONCEPT 2: A PORTAL TO INDONESIA
The enlarged Pepsi globe does triple duty: a brand asset, a portal through the can into each of the three worlds, and a kelir, the backlit screen of a wayang performance. The globe becomes the portal. The portal becomes the screen.
ACTIVATION AND MERCHANDISE A coin press machine set across the city presses an empty Pepsi can into a collectible coin. One face carries the Pepsi brand, the other one of six endemic creatures in wayang cutout, cast in aluminium from returned cans.
The designs above were created as concepts only.