Company Background

PepsiCo entered India in 1989 and has grown to become the country’s largest-selling food and beverage company. One of the largest multinational investors in the country, PepsiCo has established a business aiming to serve the long-term dynamic needs of consumers in India.

Objective :

PepsiCo India spends heavily on TV and Print during the cricket season as the sport has a huge following in India. Occurring once every four years, the ICC Cricket World Cup is not only the country’s biggest sporting event but also the biggest media event. Ahead of the tournament in April 2011, Komli Media, a leading digital media network platform in the Asia-Pacific region, approached PepsiCo with the idea of doing a major campaign on Facebook timed to mark the start of India’s run-up to the event in Dubai.

PepsiCo India had four key objectives including creating buzz for the company around the Cricket World Cup by organizing the biggest online branding event. It also wanted to get its cricket centric television spots closer to consumers and create a deeper level of engagement for the brand. What’s more, the brand wanted to drive traffic to an application it had created specifically for the Cricket World Cup. The brand’s agency, Group M, partnered with the brand in the campaign’s execution.

Approach :

PepsiCo India decided to run a Reach Block on February 11, 2011 to guarantee that it would each 100 percent of its target audience over a 24-hour period. “With cricket and Pepsi, practically every single person in India is the right customer,” the brand says. “So the Reach Block had open targeting.” A main push of the campaign was amplifying the effectiveness of PepsiCo India’s “Change the Game” campaign on television by allowing people on Facebook to watch the content and interact with it inline. The first ad featured a video plus poll engagement format that incorporated a television commercial featuring cricketer-turned-umpire Billy Bowden. The ad text encouraged people to view the spot that discussed how Bowden learned his “game changing umpiring style” and asked people to vote on their favourite “game changing plays.”The second was a Premium Video Like Ad that encouraged people to watch another of PepsiCo India’s TV spots—this one about game-changing philosophy—and to connect to the Pepsi India Page.

The third ad drove people to ‘The Biggest Wave” application on PepsiCo India’s microsite. There, users could upload a headshot of themselves, creating an avatar wearing an outfit with a Pepsi logo that would dance around their desktops “cheering” on India’s cricket team. The avatar could also be shared with friends.

Results :

• The Reach Block ads were viewed more than 19million times, topping PepsiCo India’s estimates by 145 percent. Combined with sustaining media, the ads were viewed more than 22 million times.

• The brand achieved high engagement with its desired audience with 53,000 people responding to its poll in the 24-hour period.

• During the campaign, nearly 16,000 connected to the PepsiCo India Facebook Page, adding to its fan base of brand loyalists to whom it can update and engage with on a regular basis. That number climbed to nearly 22,000 with sustaining media. The Page now has more than 1 million fans. With Friends of Connection Targeting PepsiCo India could reach nearly 42 million friends of those fans.

• PepsiCo India’s Reach Block immediately went viral, with one of two impressions being a “social impression” or featuring the name of a person’s friend who had already liked the brand’s Page. PepsiCo India says it was impressed by how viral the campaign went on Facebook. “This is word of mouth or word of ‘like’ to better describe it, at its measurable best,” the brand says. “Quite simply put, one out of two impressions a user saw carried the names of his friends who had liked or engaged with the ad. This feature, also called a ‘social Impression’ is available only on Facebook and takes virality to an all new high that is quite not replicable by anything else in the space.” The brand says it has learned that it is important to focus on how to engage fans than simply acquiring them. “Experiment with all the options available to see what works the best for your communication,” PepsiCo India says. “Look at fan engagement and sustenance rather than adding numbers to the pages.”

The Future :

PepsiCo India says it anticipates deepening it relationship with Facebook in the future. “Facebook is an integral part of our digital marketing mix,” the brand says. “We see it gaining more importance as it gains popularity across socio-economic classes in India.”


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