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  • This episode of Primal Space is supported by ExpressVPN

  • On the 2nd of April 1996, global superstars Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Andre Agassi

  • stood on the runway at Gatwick Airport, waiting for a plane.

  • But they weren't there to fly to some exotic destination, the event was the plane itself;

  • a freshly painted, electric blue concorde, emblazoned with the Pepsi logo.

  • Today we're going to look at one of the biggest marketing stunts of the 90s and see

  • how something as simple as a paint job created a serious technical issue for this supersonic airliner.

  • During the mid 90's, Pepsi had decided it was time to change their design.

  • There was too much red on their cans which clashed with their rivals, Coca Cola.

  • So, they rebranded to a mostly blue can and needed a big campaign to announce this change

  • to the world.

  • And so began 'Project Blue'.

  • They struck a deal with Air France, allowing them to repaint one of the 20 concordes in

  • existence at the time.

  • In fact, they got one of the last concordes to be made, Sierra Delta.

  • This particular Concorde was built in 1978 and benefitted from new construction techniques

  • like the use of titanium rivets, which made it much lighter than other Concordes.

  • To this day, Sierra Delta holds the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe,

  • taking 31 hours 27 minutes and 49 seconds including 6 stops for fuel.

  • With the most capable Concorde at their disposal, Pepsi set a date for their big event and got to work.

  • The new paint job was carried out in secrecy at an Air France facility in Paris, requiring

  • over 200 litres of paint and thousands of man hours to complete.

  • Once the last drop was dry, they quickly wrapped the aircraft in brown paper to make sure the

  • stunt was kept secret.

  • Since the big event was in London, they sped across the English Channel during the night,

  • remaining undercover before being escorted straight to a hanger at Gatwick airport.

  • Journalists from all over the world had been invited to the hangar, being told that they

  • would see a new ad, featuring Crawford, Schiffer and Agassi.

  • What followed was the most 90's event imaginable, a futuristic light show with supermodels arriving

  • on motorbikes.

  • After the main ad was introduced, the blue concorde was wheeled into the dark hangar,

  • through a fog of smoke machines and strobe lights.

  • This event cost Pepsi around 5 million dollars to produce, making it the most expensive ad

  • ever made at the time.

  • But this wasn't the only publicity stunt in the Project Blue campaign.

  • Just a month after the Concorde unveiling, Pepsi became the first ever company to shoot

  • a commercial in space.

  • Cosmonauts onboard the Mir space station took a large replica of the new Pepsi can on a space walk.

  • This ad cost Pepsi another 5 million dollars to produce.

  • But once the ad was finished, Pepsi had changed the design of the can and the ad was never aired.

  • We go into this and other ambitious space adverts in a previous Primal Space video.

  • After Concorde's new look was unveiled, Pepsi took the plane on a promotional tour,

  • jetting off to 10 different cities across Europe and the Middle East.

  • However, there was one major condition.

  • They had to reduce the speed.

  • The typical cruising speed for a concorde was Mach 2.04.

  • But flying at this speed generated a huge amount of heat.

  • This was partly due to the friction of the air passing over the surface of the aircraft.

  • with supersonic aircraft, not all the air can move out of the way fast enough.

  • This compresses the air and creates an area of high pressure in front of the nose, which

  • heats up the plane.

  • At full speed, the nose would get as hot as 127 degrees with the fuselage and the wings

  • exceeding 90 degrees.

  • This would cause the aircraft to visibly expand by around 30 mm.

  • Inside the cockpit, you could see this happening and a gap would open up between the flight

  • engineer's console and the bulkhead.

  • On some of the retired planes, you can actually see a cap that was placed in the gap on the

  • final flight, becoming trapped, once the metal shrank again.

  • This expansion is a problem in all supersonic planes.

  • The fastest jet ever created, the Lockheed SR-71 blackbird, was built with many small

  • parts that could each expand.

  • This would often cause the aircraft to have fuel leaks whilst sitting on the runway.

  • Concorde was designed to limit surface heat as much as possible.

  • They used a special white paint that was much more reflective than typical aircraft paint,

  • allowing it to radiate more heat.

  • The jet fuel played a key role in absorbing a lot of the surface heat, helping to keep

  • the aircraft at a nominal temperature.

  • Even with all this protection, surfaces inside the cabin became warm to the touch during

  • a normal flight.

  • So, with the new dark blue colour scheme, the pilots were told that they could only

  • pass Mach 2 for a maximum of 20 minutes.

  • Instead, they flew at a cruising speed of Mach 1.7 for most of the flight, where the

  • heating was less of an issue.

  • Sierra Delta flew with the Pepsi livery for two weeks before returning to its normal service

  • under the traditional Air France design.

  • During its short stint as a flying billboard, it visited 10 cities and completed 14 supersonic flights.

  • The process of converting the aircraft into Pepsi colors likely set the company back around

  • 1 million dollars and it's estimated that Pepsi's budget for the entire Project Blue

  • campaign was over half a billion dollars.

  • By the end of 1996, Coke were making almost 50% more profit than Pepsi.

  • Even going supersonic didn't make them fast enough to catch the world's most popular cola.

  • By the time Concorde ended in 2003, it was simply a glamorous way for the wealthy to

  • travel and the quickest way for business people to get to their meeting on the other side of the world.

  • Nowadays, the world is more connected than ever and having a business meeting over the

  • internet is probably safer than flying at mach 2 in a tin can.

  • Whenever you are connected to public WiFi, it's incredibly easy for hackers to steal

  • your passwords, emails and credit card information.

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  • Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

This episode of Primal Space is supported by ExpressVPN

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