Hi! I'm Dani Maldonado,

I make complex things clear And clear things beautiful.

decisions · 2018 → present

Creativity applied to the problems that matter: distinction, demand, and growth.

  1. 01

    Some brands can't be fixed. They have to be replaced.

    starry · pepsico
  2. 02

    We gave up the logo to win the brand.

    mtn dew × game of thrones · pepsico
  3. 03

    Pepsi doesn't follow the meal. It belongs at the table.

    food deserves pepsi · pepsico
  4. 04

    You don't borrow culture. You earn your place in it.

    brisk × black panther · pepsico
Dani Maldonado I make complex things clear. And clear things beautiful.
← back to decisions 01 / 04

Brand Launch · 2023 · North America

Sierra Mist had spent 20 years losing. PepsiCo needed to replace it with a brand capable of earning Gen Z's attention from scratch. I led that build, from the first naming brief through national launch.

My Role
Creative Director, Brand Launch
Scope
Naming · Identity · Packaging · Campaign · Activation
Led Across
Brand Marketing · Insights · Media · PR · Sports Partnerships
$500M+Net revenue, year one
5.3%Lemon-lime market share, year one
+8.8%Household penetration
all 6 results
Gold Silver Winner 3 awards

01 · the complexity

Sierra Mist had cycled through formulas, names, and sweeteners for two decades and eroded to a 0.1% share in a category Sprite owned at 7%. The brief was not a refresh. It was a replacement, built for an audience that had grown up entirely in a competitor's world and had no reason to give PepsiCo a second look.

The core problem was not creative. It was credibility. A new name and new packaging would not be enough. The brand had to earn cultural belonging before it could claim market share.

two decades of formulas, names & sweeteners

02 · the clarity

The only way to beat Sprite was to become something it could never be.

Every decision that followed came from that premise.

We built the identity around yellow. Every lemon-lime brand before Starry had defaulted to green. We staked visual territory no competitor had claimed. Bold color-blocking, a bespoke typeface called Cloud9 designed to echo the aesthetic of 90s and Y2K streetwear, and a wordmark with a star hidden in the lower bowl of the S. The visual system felt closer to a fashion drop than the soda aisle.

We ran a rigorous naming process. From a field of 100+ candidates evaluated for audience resonance, distinctiveness, and legal viability, Starry was selected. Bright, forward-looking, and free of the legacy baggage Sierra Mist had accumulated over two decades. The tagline "Hits Different" closed the argument: a Gen Z-native declaration of difference, not continuity.

We designed brand instigators, not mascots. Lem and Lime were built to earn a cultural following before anyone connected them to a soda. The defining detail: Lem wears a lime costume. Lime wears a lemon one. A small subversion that communicated everything about how this brand thinks.

We entered culture before we entered retail. Rather than leading with a traditional shelf push, we chose NBA All-Star Weekend as the media launchpad, placing Starry at one of the year's highest-profile cultural moments before the brand had reached full distribution. A live fan activation drew 50,000+ consumers. Celebrity partnerships with Keke Palmer and Giannis Antetokounmpo drove national awareness. Simultaneous launch across PepsiCo's full QSR network anchored the retail footprint.

03 · the beauty

Starry captured 5.3% lemon-lime market share in year one and generated over $500M in net revenue. It earned design recognition across three major programs and coverage across trade and consumer press. Here is what it looked like.

$500M+Net revenue, year one
5.3%Lemon-lime market share, year one
+8.8%Household penetration
50K+Consumers at NBA All-Star Weekend
229K+TikTok followers gained at launch
56K+Instagram followers gained at launch

awards

  • Gold 2024 Brand Identity & Connected Packaging Awards · Design Performance
  • Silver 2024 World Design Awards, Better Future · Graphic Design, Identity & Branding
  • Winner 2023 Good Design Awards · Starry Visual Identity

in partnership with

01 Starry
02MTN DEW × Game of Thrones 03Food Deserves Pepsi 04Brisk × Black Panther
Dani Maldonado I make complex things clear. And clear things beautiful.
← back to decisions 02 / 04
01Starry
02MTN DEW × Game of Thrones
03Food Deserves Pepsi 04Brisk × Black Panther
Dani Maldonado I make complex things clear. And clear things beautiful.
← back to decisions 04 / 04
01Starry 02MTN DEW × Game of Thrones 03Food Deserves Pepsi
04Brisk × Black Panther
Dani Maldonado I make complex things clear. And clear things beautiful.
← back to decisions 03 / 04
01Starry 02MTN DEW × Game of Thrones
03Food Deserves Pepsi
04Brisk × Black Panther
Dani Maldonado I make complex things clear. And clear things beautiful.

about

An arc, not a résumé.

new york · miami · cdmx · são paulo

Dani Maldonado

I grew up in Bogotá believing that creativity was a human superpower. More than a decade into leading creative at one of the world’s largest brands, I am more convinced of it than ever.

My work lives at the intersection of culture, design, and business consequence. Creativity as the lever that moves real outcomes, inside complex organizations, at global scale. That is the problem I am built for, and it is the thread running through everything I have done at PepsiCo, from launching brands to founding entire functions that did not exist before I arrived.

Where I am most focused right now is the question that every serious creative organization is sitting with: what does AI mean for how we actually work? I have not just been thinking about it. I have been inside it, building the roadmap, making the organizational case, and implementing it at scale within a Fortune 50 brand. My view is that the leaders who get this right are the ones who treat it as a creativity question first and a technology question second. That framing changes everything about how you build.

The other thing I believe, just as strongly, is that the team is the strategy. I build cultures where people are genuinely energized by the work, where that energy is visible in everything produced, and where having a good time is not a perk but a design principle. Some of the most important things I have built cannot be put in a case study.

I think in three languages. Spanish, Portuguese, English. I have lived this work across New York, Miami, Mexico City, and São Paulo, and the perspective that comes from moving across cultures and languages is not background detail.

It is how I see.

the through-line

What I’m built for

  1. 01
    Creative Leadership a decade at global scale
  2. 02
    AI & Creativity roadmap to real, at a fortune 50
  3. 03
    Team & Culture the team is the strategy
  4. 04
    Brand Building launched brands, founded functions
  5. 05
    Business Strategy creativity that moves outcomes
  6. 06
    Design & Craft where culture meets design
  7. 07
    Global Perspective three languages, four cities