Dive Transient:
- Pepsi unveiled a brand new vacation advertising effort that sees Santa Claus make the change from rival Coke Zero Sugar, in response to information shared with Advertising and marketing Dive.
- A video kicking off the social-focused marketing campaign exhibits Santa caught red-handed shopping for bins of Pepsi Zero Sugar from a New York Metropolis bodega. In a follow-up submit, the Christmas icon addresses his change in preferences whereas fumbling with smartphone expertise and teeing up a nationwide SMS promotion.
- Customers can textual content “style” to the quantity 81234 to obtain as much as $2.50 money again on purchases of Pepsi Zero Sugar by the top of the 12 months. Pepsi additionally dropped in on SantaCon in New York final weekend to conduct some “unscientific polling” round bar-hopping Santas’ delicate drink of selection.
Dive Perception:
Pepsi is toying with its chief rival’s vacation advertising iconography to spice up its zero-sugar choices across the finish of the 12 months. Coke has leveraged Santa in its promoting for nearly a century, to the extent that it has helped form broad shopper perceptions of the Christmas fixture. Nonetheless, Saint Nick proves a fickle soda fan in Pepsi’s newest social push, which sees him depart a bodega with a present bag stuffed with Pepsi Zero Sugar and later handle the controversy in a livestream-style video that he clumsily struggles to report.
Pepsi took the idea into the actual world final weekend for New York Metropolis’s SantaCon, an annual event that sees crowds of rowdy folks go bar-hopping outfitted as Father Christmas. Style assessments carried out in the course of the usually chaotic gathering noticed eight in 10 Santas choose Pepsi Zero Sugar, although the model admitted that the findings have been unscientific.
Different components of the trouble embrace a nationwide SMS promotion encouraging shoppers to make the change to Pepsi with the promise of cash-back rewards by the top of the 12 months. Pepsi is working extra Santa-related content material on its Instagram, Fb, X, TikTok and YouTube channels. VaynerMedia is behind the inventive.
The PepsiCo marketer has gone on the offensive in current months, with a deal with candid-camera content material supposed to attach with social media audiences and go viral. One stunt noticed Pepsi brokers storm quick meals chains that solely carry Coke merchandise to swap out diners’ drinks with Pepsi, with some expletive-filled reactions caught on movie. Pepsi’s renewed cracks at opponents come because the model has seen some market share slip. It misplaced its long-held spot because the No. 2 soda within the U.S. earlier this 12 months to Dr Pepper.
Coke can also be in a susceptible place after releasing a vacation marketing campaign that was created with generative synthetic intelligence (AI). The work, which references nostalgic advertisements from the corporate’s previous, has been extremely controversial within the inventive group and appeared to obtain a combined shopper response.
Zevia, a soda model that makes use of the sugar substitute stevia, earlier this month launched a marketing campaign that options intentionally off-putting AI-generated Christmas imagery in a shot throughout Coke’s bow. Pepsi and Coke each are contending with a rising fleet of better-for-you delicate drink disruptors and leaning on the zero-sugar class as a progress driver in response.
