NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — How long does it take to remake an icon? Try five months.

That’s the amount of time Pepsi took to revamp its famous logo, after top executives Indra Nooyi and Massimo d’Amore called for a “quantum leap” forward in transforming the soft-drink category and defining Pepsi as a cultural leader, said Frank Cooper, Pepsi’s VP-portfolio brands.

“We felt like, as we move out of this traditional mass marketing and mass distribution era into today’s culture, there’s an opportunity to bring humanity back, both in terms of the design but also in the way we engage consumers,” he said. “By making the logo more dynamic and more alive … [it is] absolutely a huge step in the right direction.”

And a costly one. Pepsi would not discuss what it’s paying for the revamp, but experts estimate the cost for a top firm to work five months at north of $1 million. But that’s just the beginning. The real cost, said an expert, is in removing the old logo everywhere it appears and putting new material up. For Coke or Pepsi, when you add up all the trucks, vending machines, stadium signage, point-of-sale materials and more around the world, it could easily tally several hundred million dollars, the expert said.

The new logo is a white band in the middle of Pepsi’s circle that loosely forms a series of smiles: A smile will characterize brand Pepsi, while a grin is used for Diet Pepsi and a laugh is used for Pepsi Max. The new logo is Pepsi’s 11th in its 110-year history. Five logos have been introduced in the past 21 years, with the last update in 2002.

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