Golin’s Pure Leaf Campaign Teaches How it’s Refreshing to Say No

By Isabel Manella, Account Executive

Pure Leaf is teaching people of all ages the importance of saying no.

I grew up watching and reading about fairy tales, and as I got older, I realized that they all hold a common theme. Fairy tales promote this antiquated idea that heroines are viewed as damsels-in-distress. Recently, Golin, a world-renowned media company, was hired by PepsiCo to create a new story for Pure Leaf’s iced tea brand. One of the goals of Golin’s campaign was to show the audience what could have been if Rapunzel didn’t let down her hair, or if Hansel and Gretel didn’t go into the forest.

With the help of Golin, Pure Leaf launched the “Once Upon a No” campaign to communicate the importance of saying no because “no” is beautiful. The campaign not only modernized outdated fairy tales such as Rapunzel, The Princess and the Frog, and Hansel and Gretel, but it also relays to young, impressionable girls and boys that they are strong and have the ability to say no.

As shared by Katrina McDonald, Senior Director of Pepsi Lipton Partnership, Pure Leaf says no to any artificial colors or sweeteners during the process of brewing their iced tea. By saying no, they are opening themselves up to greater opportunities to say yes, and that is related to how men and women should feel when they say no.

The campaign created a series of short commercials starring Amy Poehler. Poehler explained in an interview with Forbes, “If there was just one minute where men and women trusted their instincts and were comfortable just saying no, things would have gone a lot differently. More people would have lived.”

According to a survey conducted by Pepsi and Pure Leaf, almost 70% of them explained that they feel pressure in their professional lives to say yes. Saying yes could be as simple as taking on a task that you do not want to do, but feel some obligation to help out. I think that we can all relate to social or professional situations where we succumbed to saying yes, even though we all really wanted to say no.

Golin’s “Once Upon a No” campaign emphasized to consumers how saying no is empowering, but it also never felt more refreshing than when drinking Pure Leaf’s iced tea. Fairy tales typically include a subliminal message, similar to this campaign. Pure Leaf is not solely focusing on promoting their delicious iced tea, but they want to empower everyone to have the choice to say no whenever they want.