When you were a kid, did you ever wonder where your teacher got all those cool workbooks? Or that nifty dry erase board? No? Me neither.

Today though, chances are your kids’ teachers are browsing the Web when it comes time to stock the supply closet. We visited several sites catering to the important men and women who nurture our angelic children. (That is, when they’re not giving the little buggers detention for smuggling frogs and firecrackers in their backpacks).

Our first stop was TeachersParadise.com (http://www.teachersparadise.com). At first glance, the site is very, very, very text heavy. I guess this makes sense; if teachers don’t like to read, who does?

The product most prominently featured on the home page is the “Yacker Tracker.” This $48.99 item is a device shaped like a traffic light that monitors noise levels in the classroom. Personally, I can imagine kids yelling louder just to see the colors change. But what do I know?

The back-to-school specials section features oodles of books, banners and other goodies, like a “Star Spangled Citizen” reward pad, a pad of certificates teachers can use to reward achievements by students.

There are also reams of the requisite standard school supplies, like scissors, pencils, laminated maps and yardsticks. Special sections are also featured for early childhood, substitute teachers and craft items.

Over at Creative Teaching Press (http://www.creativeteaching.com), a trio of specials were featured on the home page. One was Ring-Its. The copy for this item was well written; it made the plastic binder rings seem much more exciting than they had any right to sound. And there was also a “Brand New Year” bulletin board kit, with welcome signs, back-to-school cutouts and the like.

But the most interesting special was the pirate themed “Captain Jack’s Journal.” Johnny Depp school supplies? Sign me up. But this was no “Pirates of the Caribbean” tie-in. Instead, it’s a tool to help inspire children to write and learn about different styles of writing, penned by a children’s book author.

It may be a great teaching tool, but what it really did was make me think about how Captain Jack Sparrow school supplies would be fun. Or even better, how neat would it be to buy school supplies endorsed by the good Captain’s inspiration, Keith Richards? Sure, they’d be educational in a completely wrong way, but they’d be great.

The main sections of CreativeTeaching.com were a little less captivating. The long listings under each category seemed time consuming and overwhelming—not a great combination for overworked teachers with little time to spare.

The best of the trio of sites visited was ClassroomDirect.com (http://www.classroomdirect.com). The home page was inviting, with specials and easy to find links for catalog requests, order tracking and a number of other essentials.

I was immediately intrigued by the special on Elmers glue—a gallon for $6.99. It’s more glue than I’d need in two lifetimes, but hey, a deal’s a deal. Then there’s the $59.99 personal classroom laminator. Again, I have no idea what I’d laminate but it sounds like a bargain! Maybe I should get two.

The site also entices teachers with perks like a fee spa treatment coupon if they purchase $25 in Bic products.

Overall, the ClassroomDirect.com site was easy to navigate with links to any school item one could possibly need, from those six seat baby buggies you see daycare teachers pushing down the street to basic notebooks and pens.

Now, about that glue…

Pepsi-Cola Co. is boldly taking its flagship brand into the first summer of the new millennium with some equity leveraged from the century just ended.

After a 17-year hiatus, the beverage division of Purchase, NY-based PepsiCo has revived the legendary Pepsi Challenge taste test vs. Coca-Cola. Beginning in mid-August, the company’s Pepsi Stuff rewards program will return after a two-year layoff, albeit with an online twist powered by Web partner Yahoo. (OK, so the new millennium is represented somewhere.)

In between the two nostalgia trips, Pepsi will borrow on its long relationship with popular music in a Choose Your Music effort that will let consumers compile custom CDs.

Living up to its former tagline as “the Choice of a New Generation,” Pepsi has incorporated a little freedom of choice into each of the efforts – be it Pepsi over Coke, a song from a play list, or prizes from the Stuff ensemble. After all, notes Pepsi spokesperson David DeCecco, “This is a Presidential election year.”

By the end of 2000, Pepsi hopes arch-rival Coke is bushed and gored, and that more citizens are electing to quench their thirst with the No. 2 product in a category that’s been steadily losing ground to non-cola soft drinks, juices, waters, and teas. In 1990, cola sales garnered 71.3 percent of the North American carbonated beverage business. By 1999, that figure had fallen to 60.5 percent. Pepsi’s market share last year was 13.8 percent, compared with Coke Classic’s 20.3 percent, per Beverage Digest, Bedford Hills, NY.

“We think that [these promotions] will reenergize the category, reminding everyone how much colas bring to their lives and how much they like them,” contends Pepsi vp-marketing Frances Britchford. “For the past five to 10 years, colas have been down. There’s so much choice, it’s inevitable that growth would slow down. But colas are still the industry’s biggest contributors. And now we’re bringing back excitement to the category.”

DISCERNING TASTES

The new and fully integrated Pepsi Challenge launched March 26 in conjunction with the Academy Awards broadcast. The telecast marked the debut of a Challenge-teasing TV spot starring baseball star Ken Griffey, Jr. and liter-sized “Pepsi Girl” Hallie Eisenberg. Griffey is one of several marquee names recently signed to push Pepsi including fellow baseball slugger Sammy Sosa, country singer Faith Hill, and rust-proof rock group Kiss.

The Challenge made its first public appearance since 1983 that same star-studded evening, right outside the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles where the Oscars were presented. While tuxedoed actors and cleavaged actresses paraded up and down the red carpet, some gawkers were able to pause long enough to revive the side-by-side blind taste test – which actually began as a regional promotion in Dallas in 1975.

“You’d be shocked to see how many kids camped out across the street,” says Kathleen Mulcahy, director of client services for TLP, Inc., the Dallas-based agency that’s working on the current efforts. Mulcahy isn’t implying that the youthful throng was there just to sample soda. But she is noting the fact that this Challenge is aimed squarely at the 80 million Americans under 20 who weren’t around the last time Pepsi went head-to-head with Coke. (This generation gets to compare Pepsi One with Diet Coke, too.)

TLP is coordinating with the folks in Purchase, as well as with GMR Marketing, the New Berlin, WI, agency hired to take the Challenge on the road through July 4 (Pepsi’s bottlers will take over the effort after the holiday.)

“We have 55 teams out there, each consisting of a truck that carries four sampling booths, two samplers, and a manager,” reports Ann Janikowsky, vp-client services for GMR, adding that 55 chase vans shuttle samplers to Challenge venues. Stops include malls, theaters, major and minor league baseball parks, NASCAR races, festivals, and state fairs in the nation’s top 30 markets. “By the time it’s done,we’ll have been to thousands of venues, and about five million people will have taken the Challenge,” predicts Pepsi’s DeCecco.

To give the un-Challenged portion of the U.S. population an audiovisual taste of what it’s all about, a series of related TV spots from BBDO New York will air through the promotional window. Additional support will come via radio ads and point-of-purchase displays.

The TV spots will feature both real people and celebrity samplers, but “they won’t be overproduced,” explains Mulcahy. “We’re making consumers believe these were not actors. The slicker an ad is, the less real it looks.”

AND IF THEY LIKE IT…

To reward consumers who actually buy Pepsi (as well as Diet Pepsi, Pepsi One, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Storm, or Mountain Dew), Pepsi-Cola has teamed with Time-Warner’s Warner Music Group, Los Angeles, on a Choose Your Music program that kicked off last month. Consumers accumulate points provided on nearly 1.5 billion bottles and packs of Pepsi products toward free customized CDs made – or “burned,” as the process is known – by Reston, VA-based Musicmaker.com. A liter bottle carries one point, a 12-pack five points, and a 24-pack 10 points. Fifty points can be redeemed for a five-song CD; 100 points are good for a 10-song CD with a bonus track.

Printed lists of at least 100 artists, both popular and obscure (but mostly from the Warner stable), and about 180 song titles are available at retail outlets – nearly 5,000 of which have installed listening stations to sample tracks. Stores also carry information about a sweepstakes overlay offering consumers chances to win cameos in music videos, CD libraries, and concert tickets. An online component at PepsiWorld.com features downloadable song samples, music selections not on the printed lists, information about the artists, and sweeps details.

“A key part of leadership marketing is being able to change and adapt to what the consumer wants,” says Britchford, when asked about Pepsi’s past strategy of designing campaigns around single artists such as Michael Jackson or Ray Charles. “In the ’80s, music was dominated by a few key players. In the latter ’90s and now, people have eclectic tastes,” Britchford says. “We’re reacting to those eclectic tastes.”

MORE STUFF

Offering more choice is the motivation behind the latest upgrade of the Pepsi Stuff frequent-buyers program, which this time around is a joint online/offline promotion with mega-portal Yahoo, Santa Clara, CA. Packaging and collateral carry a “Pepsi Stuff.com, Powered by Yahoo” logo.

Another points-for-rewards format, the campaign lets consumers collect points from under the caps of 1.5 billion 20-ounce and one-liter bottles of Pepsi and Mountain Dew and redeem them online at PepsiStuff.com, a special site created by Yahoo. Prizes include electronics, apparel, and discounts from various manufacturers and retailers. The program also features auctions of rare items from Pepsi. Consumers initially register on the site and receive a personal account, where they store points obtained by entering the alphanumeric codes on the caps. They then revisit the site to update their accounts, preview prizes in an e-catalog, and order items.

The link between Pepsi and Yahoo provides a mutually beneficial branding environment. “Pepsi is a great partner, because it helps make Yahoo – which is still largely thought of as a virtual brand – more tangible in a real-world context,” says Karen Edwards, Yahoo’s vp-brand marketing. Pepsi, meanwhile, gets exposure to Yahoo’s 120 million monthly “eyeballs” and mass access to the current “next generation” of cyber-consumers.

It also gets a quantifiable measurement of participation. “We will know how many people visit the site and redeem points on a weekly basis,” says Britchford.

Bill Brown, whose Jackson, MS-based Brown Bottling Group has been an independent Pepsi bottler for about 30 years, is cautiously optimistic about the Yahoo promotion. “I’ve always thought that `Stuff’ was a long-term program, and this is an interesting new twist,” he says. “But you have to becareful, because not everywhere do kids have access to computers at home.”

“As colas go, so do the other products we sell,” Brown says. “We actually sell more Mountain Dew than Pepsi, but we need colas to catch the public’s attention.”

From there, it’s a matter of choice.

Pepsi is allowing any consumer to set up his own taste test with a downloadable Pepsi Challenge home kit available at pepsi.com. How could promo’s editors pass up an opportunity like that?

An e-mail sent through promo’s Stamford, CT-based corporate headquarters (on an unseasonably warm day) recruited a bevy of taste-testers, all willing to take two sips for the cause. A blind test area was constructed in the promo conference room. Samplers were given a taste of both Pepsi and Coke Classic (both from 12-oz. cans), then asked which they preferred.

The event generated rather close results, but in the end Pepsi’s challenge failed: 52 percent of our tasters chose Coke, 48 percent picked Pepsi.