Digital Marketing Strategies for PepsiCo
PepsiCo undertakes digital marketing globally in the aerated beverage industry to promote its brand. PepsiCo’s brand incorporates several products in its portfolio. However, the top brand in the soft drinks category remains Pepsi. The product has assisted the firm in developing and evolving the brand.To delve deeper into the business models and digital marketing strategies of the beverage, Pepsi majorly uses social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, and YouTube to enhance its awareness among the consumers and users of social media.The brand implements numerous campaigns to enhance its outreach which has been successful in providing Pepsi with a great response from the consumers. Various digital marketing strategies on social media have enabled the Pepsi brand to grow even faster.
PepsiCo has a massive Facebook fan following with more than 37 million likes. One of the most popular posts on Pepsi’s Facebook page was the TVC commercial. The video worked to the favor of the Pepsi brand, and it was very engaging to the consumers. It generated more than 907,000 views, with more than 30,000 likes and approximately 1,400 shares across the Facebook platform (Moth, 2018). Besides, Pepsi’s sub-brands have done a better job of posting fresh content and responding to comments from the fans (Moth, 2018). An example of Pepsi's sub-brand, Pepsi Max,posts new updates almost every day.It specifically attracts a massive following during the festive seasons, for instance, theming Christmas with the hashtag #ChristmasJumperDay. Various stunts and updates such as magician Dynamo’s bus levitation prank elicited massive social media engagement which was viewed more than 7 million times on Facebook. Overall, Pepsi and its sub-brands like Pepsi Max’s updates achieve several hundred likes and comments with millions of fans who liked their Facebook pages (Moth, 2018).
Pepsi has numerous Twitter accounts for its diverse categories such as PepsiCo, PepsiCo Deals, Pepsi Max, Pepsi Max Crew, Pepsi Next, and PepsiCo Jobs. The main Pepsi Twitter account has attracted millions of followers, and the figures have reached up to over 3 million individuals across the Twitter platform. Pepsi has a great social media team that tweets a couple of times every day with the main focus being about the brand’s affiliation with the consumers. For instance, in 2012, it launched its first global campaign ‘Live for Now’ with the agenda of the social media platform to endorse Pepsi as an electrifying, youthful, and extraordinary brand that people associate with having a wonderful time. Besides, its newsfeed has had plenty of exciting hashtags such as the #LiveForNow, #PoolParty,#IconicSummer, and #duh. Incorporating the hashtags was also a clever move to market the brand.Another sub-brand of Pepsi, Crystal Pepsi, made a comeback and amassed over 2.2 million views within two weeks. The Pepsi brand has grown its clientele base through the Twitter social media platforms and has received a massive response in the market(Moth, 2018).
Pepsi NEXT is the only Pepsi brand that has an official Pinterest account (Moth, 2018). It has been active for a couple of years and has pinned hundreds of images across the boards thus attracting more than 1,500 followers. One of the factors that led to this is the boards have all been random. For instance, most of the older boards are connected to Pepsi NEXT’s ‘Unbelievable’ campaign. Therefore, there are collections identified as ‘Unbelievable Places,’ ‘Unbelievable Events,’ and ‘Unbelievable Party Paraphernalia.’ Among those are other boards called‘Sampling Events’ and ‘Homemade Holiday.’ The pictures themselves are very interesting, with the social media team including plenty of text on the pins (Moth, 2018). Also, the unbelievable categories are all pulled from Buzz feed advertorials. The more recent boards include product pictures and videos from Pepsi commercials that all link back to the brand’s official website (Moth, 2018).
Pepsi NEXT also used Pinterest to facilitate competition to promote the Pepsi brand. The users had to make a board known as the ‘Unbelievable Pepsi Next Party.' They then pinned a branded Pepsi picture with at least two photos portraying their ultimate Super Bowl celebration. This attracted a couple of hundred entries, which was okay for this type of competition. The PepsiCo account does not have the officially verified Pinterest tick.It has created a few boards for subject matters such as‘Sustainability’ and ‘Innovate Globally.' However, most of them have only a couple of pins. The content is fairly corporate and dull, and hence it is not surprising that it has below1, 000 followers (Moth, 2018).
Google+
Pepsi does not put a vibrant marketing initiative into its Google+ page and usually posts less than five updates every month. Nonetheless, it has managed to attract 1,415,955 followers. The posts tend to be pictures or videos of Beyoncé and other artists, and they hardly attain more than a few hundred engagements. Pepsi’s obvious indifference for Google+ is not in any way unusual for a brand. However, there is a Google+ page for PepsiCo Jobs that has posts and updates practically every day. The content usually revolves around PepsiCo marketing campaigns and product launches as well as various updates on the brand personnel. Hence, it is not particularly interesting and only has around 3,000 followers (Moth, 2018).
Instagram
On its Instagram’s page, Pepsi has managed to garner 1.2 million followers with 208 posts. The uploading of content has been done by an in-house studio team for purposes of sustaining the brand’s Instagram page. Instead of having a step removed by hiring an agency to work on its Instagram page, Pepsi decided to have the team at the content studio that would be steadfast to the brand. This is with the notion of not breaking down the silos and to keep the Pepsi brand more integrated (Moth, 2018).
Advantages and Successes of Pepsi’s Digital Marketing
Genius Campaign and Drone Football
In 2015, Pepsi did a global digital advertisement campaign known as the Drone Football. Pepsi Max unveiled its foremost international brand campaign strategy which was set to highlight its ‘Genius with a chain of experiences and videos. The digital, content-driven and socially steered ‘Genius’ campaign showcased various videos that illustrated unique experiences. This was Pepsi’s first television and digital advertisement under the 'Genius' promotion. In the advertisement’s first video in the Drone Football, Pepsi Max transformed what seemed to be an ordinary game of football using LED lights (Digital Training Academy, 2018). This was done by illuminating the game to create an unexpected experience for the players (Digital Training Academy, 2018). The game was presided by a drone, which added the genius flavor to the experience (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The advertisement was filmed in Barcelona and featured a massive scoreboard with a holograph onto the neighboring apartment buildings. It entailed the drone moving from one place to another, grabbing the ball, and displaying yellow cards for fouls.The reaction from the local players and spectators was genuine and authentic. Pepsi Max fashioned an exciting and thrilling night with LED lights, as well as the drone and groundwork camera technologies to capture the impressive and innovative game from numerous angles. Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Pepsi, Kristin Patrick, stated that they believe that the most spectacular experiences do not just occur; they are created (Digital Training Academy, 2018). The ‘Genius’ campaign showcased experiences that were outstanding and made more exciting when something unanticipated happens.In the case of Drone Football, the digital marketing strategy took something that was already stimulating which included a spontaneous game of football among friends and upturned it by adding amazing twists.That initially amazed the footballers and then made their game even much more exciting than it would have been. The concept was to create thrilling digital content that would make consumers engaged with the Pepsi brand (Digital Training Academy, 2018). Thus, the idea of the advertisement was to take exclusive experiences and then merge them with what the consumers find passionate about such as sport, music, and technology (Digital Training Academy, 2018). The ‘Genius’ campaign was predominantly focused on digital broadcasting and featured more content-driven adverts shown on television (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Super Bowl
In 2017, Pepsi embarked on Super Bowl 51 with multi-platform digital marketing actions. Over the past years, Super Bowl was greatly limited to its brand to do marketing. Game day advertisements were where brands portrayed most of their buzz thus making eye-catching television commercials a core concentration for marketers. However, in an era of digital interruptions and dropping television ratings, a multi-platform strategy was necessary to capitalize on the hype mounting to the blockbuster event, as Pepsi’s comprehensive approach for Super Bowl 51illustrated(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi’s strategy portrayed a healthy combination of what was established to previously work alongside new experiments such as partnering with Taste made for a cooking contest at the Super Bowl. The ‘Game Day Grub Match’ was one of the most attention-grabbing first-hand offerings, makingTastemade chef influencers to be the starring in original branded content. When branded content is well articulated, it can go viral and take on life single-handedly. Therefore, Pepsi and Tastemade influencers aimed to connect well with the audience to give off more genuine feelings of communication instead of traditional approaches. Tastemadeendorsed the new show across social media platforms, including through marketing on its Snapchat Discover page. The winner of the cooking contest then took over the Taste made Discover page on the day of the game to provide the viewers with a behind-the-scenes feeling during their Super Bowl experience (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The brand’s effort was equally cutting edge provided how new the technology has been. Pepsi was smart in encouraging its consumers to get innovative in creating their videos to be shared on social media platforms. This was a creative digital marketing strategy done by Pepsi in regards to the user-generated content approach during the Super Bowl season. The partnership with Snapchat was perhaps Pepsi’s safest best in 2017 granted how popular the brand’s Gatorade sponsored framework was in the previous year when it gathered approximately 160 million impressions. While Gatorade was outstanding in 2016during Super Bowl 50, Pepsi experienced much more stiff competition in 2017. This was because the brand implementation of the platform quickly fast-tracked in 2016. Similarly, Snapchat was apparently pricing Super Bowl advertisement spots at up to five million dollars (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
In 2018, Pepsi acquired the most social media buzz for the Super Bowl advertisements.According to research conducted by Amobee Brand Intelligence, Pepsi received the most social media engagement out of the 5 million dollar advertisement packages during the Super Bowl. It had an outstanding Super Bowl this year by triumphing on social media and providing some prizes for the users retweeting using the #sweepstakesentry hashtag on Twitter. By engaging on social media, the amplification was heightened, and the communication felt renewed for the audience (Digital Training Academy, 2018). Pepsi’s engagement across social media platforms such as sponsoring the halftime show with Justin Timberlake warranted that the audience was able to view Pepsi content across multiple forums and further augment its communication. This ensured that the audience would not only recall the brand's advertisement, but they would also view it at an optimal number of times. By enhancing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that began ahead of the game and continued the campaign even after the Super Bowl was over, Pepsi provides engagement across multiple platforms(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
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Table showing the brands with the most number of Tweets during Super Bowl 52 from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm Eastern Time on the 4th of February 2018.
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Graph showing the brands with the most number of Tweets during Super Bowl 52from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm Eastern Time on the 4th of February 2018.
Pepsi Max Created Monster Mirror Stunt for Viral Marketing
In 2014’s Halloween, cinema lovers at the Odeon Bayswater in London were given a surprise in the washrooms as their reflections on the mirrors were morphed to resemble the Halloween clown. Pepsi Max made smart use of augmented reality and digital marketing to get the most out of a frightening stunt from the mirror prank. The major challenge was that Pepsi was conducting a new brand streamlining campaign known as ‘Unbelievable’ and wanted to use seasonal milestones to aid in amplifying its UK audience through social media(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Fashioned for the brand's Unbelievable Channel, some hidden cameras were utilized by Pepsi Max to capture the reactions of the people who were pranked by the outrageous reflections. The tailored and modified bathroom mirrors in the washrooms of the cinema transformed the reflections of the users into Halloween characters. These involved crazy grinning clowns, scavenging zombies, and vicious werewolves.The Monster Mirror prankappliedaugmented reality software and facial tracking technology.The Pepsi brand worked with a couple of agencies to perform the stuntsuch asRAD London, advertising agency AMV, Thibaut Weise from Faceshift, creative technologist James Rowley,and Jon Hammond from Just Add Music Media.
The results were incredible because the scheme went viral by gathering over 2 million views during the Halloween season. It equally assisted AMV to win numerous awards for best outdoor advertising strategies.The digital marketing manager for beverages at PepsiCo, Aman Matharu, stated that ever since they unveiled the Unbelievable YouTube channel, Pepsi Max often generated and published shareable content that utilizedstate-of-the-artinnovation and technology to illustrate unbelievable features and experiences.Halloween paved the perfect opportunity to produce a collaborative augmented reality experience for the audience at Odeon Bayswater in a creative, exciting, and slightly spooky technique(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi Unites Families for Chinese New Year through Mobile Phones
To kick off the Chinese New Year in 2015, Pepsi launched the ‘Bring Happiness Home’ campaign. Pepsi used this major national event to onboard a new social media campaign that put loved ones at the focal point. This was a digital marketing strategy to invite the young millennials in China to spend more time being thoughtful about their families by making self-made videos. The program was so prosperous that it generated more than 1.2 billion views during the holiday season alone.
There was a finding of smartphone addiction that was producing an increasing generation gap in China. Pepsi wanted to inspire the smart phone loving youngsters to interact more with their loved ones during the Chinese New Year,which is the greatest Chinese holiday of the Spring Festival.The brand’s market research identified that 51 percent of the young Chinese preferred using their smartphones in the accompaniment of their loved ones during the festivities. In addition, more than 45 percent preferred spending more time with their smartphones than with their loved ones(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi partnered with video-making and sharing app Meipai, China Women’s Development Foundation, and a couple of celebrities. Pepsi equally teamed up with a dog which had a Pepsi logo bow on its neckline.The campaign inspired the youngsters to make a video of their moments of happiness shared together with family and friends and then post them on social media.For instance, PepsiCo’s Lay’s brand video demonstrated how to make duck faces for social media using chips. In order to encourage the young people to make their videos, Pepsi produced sponsored videos featuring various famous Chinese pop stars hanging out with their loved ones. These included Jolin Tsai, Huang Xiaoming, Amber Kuo, Show Lo, and Li Yifeng(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
In the campaign, Pepsi influenced the power of smartphones to bring people together to communicate special brand themes such as love and happiness. These are themes that are more often affiliated with the brand’s market pioneer and rival, Coca-Cola.The best videos became associated to a film broadcast concurrently in New York’s Times Square and China.As another initiative of its Bring Happiness Home campaign, Pepsi introduced crowdfunding by boosting donations to the China Women’s Development Foundation’s Postal Parcel for Mothers program, its humanitarian partner for 2015 (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The campaign strategy struck a chord with the target group of youngsters in China. During the Bring Happiness Home campaign,over 15 million videos were generated with over 30 percent on the Meipai platform.Generally, the campaign attracted 1.2 billion views, which represented double the total online Chinese population.The Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo in the Greater China Region, Richard Lee, stated that unlike the previous ‘Bring Happiness Home’ campaigns, the consumers were now provided the opportunities to direct and make their own videos, which then made them better associated with the initiative. Teaming up with Meipai equally made video-making an easy task for the so-called amateur directors.This Pepsi campaign exemplified the growing role that smartphone devices act not only as marketing instruments, but also as platforms to involve consumers in the establishment of marketing content (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
WeChat: Pepsi ‘Brings Happiness Home’ for Chinese New Year
During the lunar New Year period, the Chinese people send good wishes to their loved ones. Pepsigave the tradition a new twist as part of the great annual festivities campaign,’ Bring Happiness Home’. In its third year in a row, Pepsi China’s ‘Bring Happiness Home’ promotion blitz, created a WeChat feature that allowed users to send their own voice recordings to the account and then have them remixed into a tailored Pepsi theme song that they could share with family members and loved ones (Digital Training Academy, 2018). The WeChat applied a deep emphasis on audio messages as many Chinese people have a preference to that rather than texting since typing in characters can be tedious. Therefore, users could record an audio message on the Pepsi advertisement that would get remixed with a soundtrack of the popular ‘Bring Happiness Home’ theme tune (Digital Training Academy, 2018). People could also involve sound effects like the sound of a train and record an audio saying that they were on the way home. Another sound effect included horses galloping to correspond with the Year of the Horse. The brand message that majorly emanated from the theme song was subtle and it was more concerned with spreading happiness, as opposed to just telling the consumers to buy Pepsi (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Aliens Invade Bus Shelter for Pepsi Max Stunt
As part of this video campaign from Pepsi Max, London passengers witnessed escaped tigers, alien invasions and huge tentacles emanating from a bus stop window. The Pepsi brand generated over 5 million YouTube views within a fortnight from a solo upload with a few digital effects for the stunt. In its ‘Unbelievable’ campaign, the brand set up a London bus stop with a camera fronting the street behind the shelter and digital technology on New Oxford Street. This provided the illusion that the digital screen was a glass window display. The diverse effects were then performed on top of this image, causing the observers to stop, look and take photos. The augmented reality stunt soon became a success with astounded spectators who were granted an opportunity to interact and experience the world around them in an entertaining and innovative manner (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi Max Got Over 50 Million YouTube Views with ‘Uncle Drew’ Basketball Star
Pepsi uploaded a YouTube series featuring the life of an old man with rare and supernatural basketball prowess.This attracted over 50 million views in its first chapter alone with a brand engagement that encompassed far beyond a 30-second television advertisement.The campaign, which was initially launched in 2012, revolved around ‘Uncle Drew’, an apparently old-school and grizzled basketball expert.Unbeknownst to his actual basketball rivals, Uncle Drew was actually Kyrie Irving, the Cleveland Cavaliers champion who was crowned NBA’s 2012 Rookie of the Year.The description was about Uncle Drew being rutted against opponents who were oblivious of his true identity. It captured their bewilderment as the alleged old manfired past defenders, delivered massive dunks, and then shoot three pointers (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
In the third chapter, Uncle Drew stopped over in downtown Chicago at an underground jazz club to persuade his old point guard ‘Lights’ to rekindle their hey days in the court. Classically, the spectators and players on the basketball court were only informed that they would be captured for a basketball documentary.Pepsi Max partnered with The Marketing Arm to shoot a video that highlighted the brand’s identity to provide a zero-calorie drink with great taste.Marc Gilbar, the Marketing Arm’s vice president of content development, delivered the brief and evoked the Saturday Night Live sketch in 1984 when Eddie Murphy went disguised as a Caucasian. He then imagined that doing something similar with Kyrie Irving would be interesting and captivating.
Gilbar then brought his imagination into reality when he suggested Irving to be dressed up as an 80-year-old man. On the surface, he would look like an old man who could still play and dunk perfectly well. That was what the Pepsi Max brief tried to bring into fruition.This entailed looking at something on the outside and seeing one thing, but then inside was something else.The Pepsi Max brand was keen on the idea of making Irving covert during a spontaneous game and agreed to an economical budget for the video. The YouTube videos all together notched up to over 50 million views since the launch. This demonstrated how long videos could perform great brand engagement beyond the traditional 30-second television commercial design (Digital Training Academy, 2018) .
Pepsi Mobile Competition Challenged Users to ‘Move like Beyoncé’
In 2018, Pepsi asked its consumers to submit dance moves via 10-second phone videos, offering the opportunity to appear in a video with Beyoncé in New York as the brand ventured into increasing its influence users. Pepsi’sfresh summer innovativeness incorporated with the brand’s television commercial featured Beyoncé to involve a promotional aspect to its video endeavors. Pepsi’s campaign illustrated the mounting interest from brands to integrate user-generated phone videos in order to engage with the users.The best videos made the people win a tour in New York and a grand opportunity to appear with Beyoncé in a video (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The senior director of marketing at Pepsi New York,Rishi Daing, stated that Pepsi’s digital market strategy always stemmed from involving their consumers and engaging with them where they lived, worked and played.Therefore, a competition made available through a smart phone became a natural choice for them because it enabled the users to partake in it any place and anytime during the summer.Through the site, the users were encouraged to have a look at Pepsi’s most recentadvertisement and then watchBeyoncé’s dance moves. The site acquired an embedded 60 seconds-long video from Pepsi’s YouTube channel.Then, the consumersuploaded their own ten-second videos by selecting a segment of the advertisement to imitate.The ten-second time time frame was acreativefeatureinPepsi’s campaign because it fit within the duration of an Instagram and a Vine video and this compelledthe users to get straight to the point with their content(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The users first completed an entry form by putting basic information about themselves including their name, email address, and date of birth to move into the sweepstakes stage. To hasten the entry form process, the users synchronized the site with their Facebook accounts to automatically complete some of the sections.The video was then submitted through YouTube, and the consumers were requested to copy a YouTube URL to upload their videos.The entry form also enabled the consumers check off if they needed to receive further email promotional content from Pepsi at any given time in the future.In addition, the users were able to view other people’s submissions through the site.Web components and social media platforms were also utilized by Pepsi to get all the details about the campaign during the summer(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi Max Levitation Stunt with Over 7 Million YouTube Views
Pepsi Max collaborated with British magician Dynamo to create a spectacular levitation stunt on top of a double-decker bus in London thusgeneratingover7 million YouTube views and numerous press attention in the process. Dynamo asked people to stop, take a moment, and view everything from a different lens.He then took his own advice and progressed to float along with a double-decker bus in an iconic way. Dynamo carried his smartphone along to record his stunt while the camera captured the snap-happy audience. The magic trick equally made smart application of technology.British magician Dynamo gave the impression that he was holding on to a double-decker bus with his right arm in the campaign as he rode along the streets of London. The outcome was certainly remarkable as faces of the as tounded audience illustrated in amazement(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi Partnered With Youku Tudou for Online Film Campaign
Pepsi joined forces with the Chinese Internet television magnate, Youku Tudou, for a multi-channel online digital marketing strategy film known as the ‘Bring Love Home’. The 30-minute internet movie premiered concurrentlyin a Beijing cinema filled with Pepsi celebrities as well as on Youku.com and Tudou.com. Before the movie début, the strategy successfully had thousands of uploads and eventually, the online film generated more than 100 million views(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi’s promotion marked the cutting-edge and the most elaborate endeavor by a leading brand to produce themed content directing at China’s colossal and increasing audience. Prior successful campaigns from brands generated more than 100 million views and 100,000 comments going up (Digital Training Academy, 2018). Pepsi’s 2012 promotions for the same designation involved the online movie submitted on Youku and a request for Youku users to send videos conveying their wishes for their loved ones.
Alongside Youku Tudou’s media platform, Pepsi equally leveraged the influence of Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, and Taobao into the multi-layered digital marketing campaign (Digital Training Academy, 2018). According to the senior vice president of Youku Tudou Inc., Dong Yawei,the Pepsi promotion demonstrated a perfect illustration of the type of branding communications that they excel in. They understood the Chinese audience and reliably produced content that struck a chord. With Tudou and Youku becoming fully inter-connected, Pepsi’s ability to deliver commercially efficient and socially heartwarming campaigns became massive and kept on increasing (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi India Used Facebook Reach Block to Achieve 19 Million Video Ad Views
Towards the 2011 Cricket World Cup, Pepsi India applied Facebook’s video commercial designs to diligently engage with the target audience. The promotion’s main goals were to produce a buzz, make the cricket-centric television commercials closer to the consumers, create a more profound level of engagement for the brand and generate traffic to contentintended for the World Cup.Pepsi, through Facebook video adverts,amplified the influence of the television commercials thus enabling consumers to share and engage with it online(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The promotion applied a Facebook Reach Block incorporating Facebook Premium Video Advertisements for a duration of 24 hours. The initial commercial introduced a video plus poll engagement set-up that featured a television advertisement. The second was a premium video like commercial that encouraged people to watch another Pepsi television advertisement. The third led consumers to ‘The Biggest Wave’, which was an application on Pepsi’s website, where they were able to generate an avatar of themselves which could equally be shared with their networks.
The brand attained a great engagement with 53,000 users retorting to its poll within the 24-hour time frame. The reach block commercials received more than 19 million views, which was more than 145 percent of the estimations. During the campaign,almost 16,000 consumers connected to the Facebook page. The page eventually created more than 1 million fans at the time which has continued growing over the years.According to Pepsi India, the digital marketing strategy was to experiment with all the options available to understand what worked best for Pepsi’s communication. This entailed looking at fan engagement and sustenance instead of increasing figures to the pages (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Pepsi’s Dear Mr. President Refresh Everything Campaign.
This was Pepsi’s digital marketing strategy using the Media Mind technology. The platforms that Pepsi used included its website, social media, rich media and video content.The main goal was to generate brand awareness, brand positioning, consumer engagement, and purchase intent. Therefore, Pepsi’s objectives were to create awareness to its updated logo and brand, reinvent its spot as a fresh challenger brand and tap into the iconic political and social change movement of Barack Obama’s election. Pepsi equally wanted to nurture brand community via a dual communication with consumers and selected the internet and a social marketing approach as the best way to achieve this. Its ‘Refresh Everything’ statement was a natural fit for Obama’s campaign and drive for change in the political and social spheres. Therefore, the campaign incorporated social media, video content and digital marketing in innovative means to grasp the interests of the millennial generation.
The campaign utilized paid search and display commercials on Google Content Network and Yahoo Music to generate traffic to the YouTube brand page and the ‘Refresh Everything’ website. Other networks included a mobile site and e-mail marketing. There was also a one of a kind eye-blaster powered banner advertisement created that invited people with webcams to record and share their recordings openly within the banner. The top videos were launched on a branded YouTube channel and the website for refresheverything.com. Celebrities such as Will.i.am and Lady Gaga uploaded their own ‘Dear Mr. President’ video contentthrough a link. Guests of the Pepsi branded YouTube network were also redirected to a ‘Refresh Everything’ Facebook page (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
The strategy focusedon an open letter to Barack Obama and had people recording their webcam messages straight from a video banner. This got the consumers not only networking andinteracting with the banner, but actually generating content and promoting it back to the Pepsi brand.Thisexpertise of the social media campaign played an enormous role in the historic election of Barack Obama. Like no presidential candidate before him, Barack Obama used technology to coalesce and bond with key audiences into a political and social upsurge that profoundly defeated his rival. Among the major audiences thrilled on the Facebook pages and 140 character Twitter handles were the millennials and first time voters.
Over six million individuals visited the Refresh Everything on Facebook and practically 85 percent were from the target audience of the young generation. More than 175,000 individuals liked the‘Refresh Everything’page on Facebook. The webcam in the banner platformassisted toamass over 700 total video submissions that generated over 100,000 text submissions and four million views on YouTube. The‘Refresh Everything’ became the number 1 sponsored campaign on YouTube. In addition, millions of consumers becameawareof Pepsi’s campaign due to the enormous press coverage, which comprisedof 700 plus blog posts (Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Through the digital campaign strategy, 68 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast their votes for Barack Obama, versus 30 percentfor John McCain. That was by far the greatest share of the young people’sballots that any presidential candidate has obtained ever since exit polls beganshowing results by age brackets. Thanks to the Pepsi and its ‘Refresh Everything’ campaign as well asits freshlyupdated and designed logo at hand, the brand exemplifiedits great board towards the tidal wave that became the Barack Obama revolution. Pepsi chose the same communication avenues to involve the subtle millennials in an open letter to the newly elected president through its ‘Dear Mr. President’ campaign. The outcome was a direct line to the White House and a brand innovativeness like none before through social media, video content and digital marketing.
In advancingits digital marketing strategy,Pepsi began with the fundamentals of the brand. Pepsi had always been at its best while being an active participant in the culture, especially when the culture was being reinvented and refreshed. There was no greater or better opportunity of a cultural shift than the arrival and inauguration of a new United States president. The ‘Dear Mr. President’ campaign helped people from all walks of life to becomemuch closer and to take part in the cultural phenomenon of the time(Digital Training Academy, 2018).
Disadvantages and Failures of Pepsi’s Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing Flop: Pepsi Suffered Online Backlash for Kendall Jenner ‘Protest’ Advert. In April 2017, a new Pepsi commercial that featured Kendall Jenner stirred a huge online controversy against the soft drinks brand.Pepsi came under fire because of a video advert where reality television star and model Kendall Jenner used a can of Pepsi to pacify tension between the demonstrators and the law enforcers. The advert had the ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ media personality walking out a photo shoot in order to join a protest where displaying posters that read ‘love’ and ‘join the conversation’. It then showed Kendall Jennergive a can of Pepsi to a police officer during a protest sparking allegations that it exploited the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.The original advert no longer exists because the reaction from the public was ballistic against the Pepsi brand (Arica, 2017).
In the advert, famous Kendall Jenner saw a passing rainbow coalition of protestors while in the modelling photo shoot (Arica, 2017). There wasalso a lady photographer wearing a hijab working on her task, but eventually she gave in too and became a part of the march (Arica, 2017). The climax point of the commercial was that Kendall gave up the photo shooting, wiped out her lipstick, removed her blonde wig and joined the demonstration (Arica, 2017). After getting into the march and giving the police officer the can of Pepsi, he accepted the can and stated that it all ended with ‘live bolder, live louder, live for now’(Arica, 2017).
The advert was two and a half minutes long and featured a song by Skip Marley, Bob Marley’s grandson. The video was uploaded on YouTube on 3rd April 2017 and received over one million views at the time. Within a couple days, it had only accumulated2,000 likes and an appalling 14,000 dislikes.The advert was condemned by people who had construed it as a co-opt of the movement while featuring a white, privileged and popular young female using a soft drink that was sold by a massive corporation to foster peace between protestors and law enforcement.
This advert had zero inspiration even to its own audience.Seemingly, the commercial aimed to reach out to the millennials. However,it neglected the idea that millennials were too smart to realize that it was pointless and had no form of direction. Kendall Jenner appeared to be a perfect model and could do anything she wanted for sure (Arica, 2017). Hence, there was no point of handing a Pepsi to solve the serious matter and the worst of all, trying to sell a product over a very delicate situation (Arica, 2017). Nevertheless, the production and theme song were very good but the critics found it difficult to comprehend why such an established brand like Pepsi could make a graveblunder like that(Arica, 2017).
Pepsi released a statement stating that it was a global commercial that replicated people from diverse walks of life coming together in the spirit of harmony and that they believed that it was an important message to deliver (Arica, 2017). However, numerous people on social media were critics of the Pepsi advert as they termed it controversial and it sparked an online backlash. This is because offering a can of soda to a police officer during a peace protest was probably not the best idea (Arica, 2017). It was interpreted as though Pepsi tried to capitalize from the ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign using the socialite. The commercial was only on air for 48 hours, but the controversial counterattacks hit social media and particularly Twitter really hard (Arica, 2017).
Conclusion
As the Digital Training Academy (2018) asserts, to remain relevant and cutting edge, brands can no longer outsource the creativity of their digital marketing strategies. Pepsi is among the topnotch brands that has created more competencies, including generating innovative content creation in-house to sell itself. Through digital marketing, Pepsi has constantly evaluated new technologies, fostered new partnership, and tested brand new ideas in the market. As a result, the social media platforms that have facilitated the promotion of the brand have made Pepsi shine bright in the industry.
For the huge beverage conglomerate, managing the brand’s identity on social media has been a nuanced undertaking that called for more direct brand involvement. Pepsi’s moves illustrate some of the unique advantages of social media campaigns, which provide brands with an opportunity to connect on a more direct platform with consumers rather than traditional media. At the same time, it opens the floodgates to negative criticism grasping a greater audience if not handled appropriately. By choosing to evolve its digital marketing strategies especially exemplified by shifting its social media outreach in-house, Pepsi has provided another demonstration of how the realities of marketing initiatives have become more digital and data-driven.
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References
Arica, A. (2017). The New Pepsi Ad Featuring Kendall Jenner Causes a Big Controversy.
Feed. Retrieved from https://digitalagencynetwork.com/the-new-pepsi-featuring-kendall-jenner-advert-causes-a-big-controversy/
Digital Training Academy. (2018). Digital Marketing Industry Case Study Library. Retrieved
from http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/casestudies/tag/pepsi
Moth, D. (2018). How Pepsi uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Econsultancy.
Retrieved from https://econsultancy.com/blog/63062-how-pepsi-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google
