By ABHINAV MOHAPATRA
Homi Battiwalla, Senior Director Marketing, Colas, Juices and Hydration, PepsiCo, talks about the rationale behind the brand’s latest ‘Oh Yes Abhi’ positioning and strategies to keep the core brand value ‘young’
Q] What is the story and rationale behind the new ‘Oh Yes Abhi’ positioning?
We discovered last year that our tagline ‘Change the Game’ was doing great, but clearly we needed to listen to the consumer and understand what is happening in his world. We spent nearly six months just understanding the world of the young Indian consumer. We heard their anxieties and found their triggers and in the journey between the two, what we found out was that Indian youth live in the moment, but they are quite excited about their future. The Indian youth says “I’m happy about my present and even more happy about my future, but I don’t want to wait, I am impatient... whatever is going to happen, I want it to happen to me right here, right now!”
Q] How does this rationale connect with the brand?
This is where we brought the brand in, there is something about Pepsi that cannot change and at heart, we are a youthful brand. But we are an irreverent challenger brand, we have always challenged things. When we entered India, we challenged the whole notion that Indians should be proud of the culture and ‘this glorious bastion of the east’. We brought in the first Hinglish line saying ‘Yehi Hai Right Choice Baby’... we took an Indian dance form, fused it with Remo Fernandes’ Western music and gave the country a beautiful anthem with the perfect east-meets-west ‘jugalbandi’. We challenged that convention when India was beginning to break out economically, and said that it is okay to go out and ask for more. Therefore, ‘Yeh Dil Maangey More’. When it came to cricket in 2011, we challenged the rules of the game and said ‘Change the Game’. We are not a preachy brand, so we said, let’s challenge the whole notion of being patient. Culturally, everybody tells us to be patient. We say, challenge that notion, fuel impatience, and Pepsi going forward is all about fuelling that impatience of the youth. Our line which is the core of our positioning says, ‘Oh Yes Abhi; Oh Yes I want it right here, right now...’
Q] What is the positioning that you are trying to attain though this campaign right now?
We have always been a very youthful beverage brand and that is what we would want to be. It does not mean that we have a sharp point of view on the protagonist’s speech or the fact that the celebrity should be only 19 years old. In this campaign, we bank on our insight that young people are impatient... there is an impatience for the cola, people come together like the metaphor of the bubbles wanting to burst out of the bottle. We took a film idea, fused the celebrity world and real world, without making it about celebrities, but real life, like the girl who wants to get a haircut, or that young footballer who is hurt but wants to help his team win. I think it is a rich space in India, and that is where Pepsi comes in, Pepsi has always stood for what young people want to say.
Q] What are your activities around this campaign?
This phase is the declaration phase and every other campaign that we do around it will demonstrate the ‘Oh Yes Abhi’ aspect of Pepsi. It is not going to be passive; there will obviously be the usual mix. We have started already on Twitter with this ‘hashtag’ called ‘Hashtag Can’t Wait Abhi’. We have used certain media influencers and want the people to tell us what it means to them. Like a guy asked when is the Pepsi IPL starting? We asked what we can do, since we have started to practice what we preach, we started a quick instant pop-up contest, so we took the two winners down to get the feel of what happens at the IPL auction. This gives them an inside view of what goes around the world of cricket bidding and what goes into making a team. The hashtag could be as simple as someone saying I wish I could have a pizza and a chilled glass of Pepsi, we would get that delivered to them, so that is the demonstration phase. We are not following a strict standard path and even for the next six months even we are not sure of the kind of elements that would come through, but where we are right now and with the Pepsi IPL in April there are a lot of opportunities.
Q] How are you engaging with your audience and what else are you doing for promotion?
TV is going to be our primary medium, delivering the message. There will be a series of ads. The interesting innovation that we are doing around the campaign is that none of the content on outdoor will be static and part of the grid will be real time social media feeds. For us, social and digital are going to play a key role, outdoor is going to play a big role in terms of the way we look at our retail point of sale. We hope to bring in a lot of fresh work into the retail landscape, the social world and the media world. Some interesting innovations are being planned, but not revealed as yet.
Q] What are you doing on the BTL front of advertising and engagement?
Our BTL is standard retail engagement, for we do have a whole proposition of retail theatres as we have a new look that we take aggressively into our retail landscape. Even if we do a 1,00,000-plus big massive theatre and stores managing our packaging and image, it will be a very dramatic experience when a guy goes into our store. We have a strong ‘on premise’ leg and a dominant share in the multiplex segment. We have a strong partnership with the young franchise of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bells and a lot of chains. There are a lot of plans to activate this whole piece there, a lot of instant gratifications and surprise moments.
Q] How has brand Pepsi evolved over the years?
The brand has grown by leaps and bounds. It is one thing to be an edgy, irreverent brand but another to be large in scale and size, be the cornerstone of a category and yet retain many of its core values. There is something quintessential about Pepsi that even a 50-year-old will get it. What we are very careful of is that it should be very youthful and fresh; our TG and bull’s eye will always be this group of 16-30 years as we call it, but there is a 16-year-old in everybody’s heart.
Q] Are you following a push or a pull marketing strategy or a mix of both?
This is all pull. But ours is a very distribution intensive business, and requires cold stock and push. We are also observing the marketplace and the economy has gotten a little tight over the last few months. Input costs are up; it is a time to balance both. When business gets tight, the biggest mistake that brands do is cutting back on marketing. So pull is a very important factor, but we can’t be in the next set of outlets for the next 10 years. You have to keep finding ways of building access which is the biggest task; one needs to balance access and affordability in India as this an impulse product category. It is not something that you will die without.
Q] What are your plans for the IPL?
It’s a little too early, but we will announce our plans by the end of February. In a nutshell, the fact that it is the Pepsi IPL gives a great chance for us to leverage it on air and we get a huge amount of assets on ground. There is tremendous scope - the fact that many brands look for a platform, while we have the single biggest platform in India for us to activate ourselves for the next five years. It is a long-term piece for us. This year, we will make a big start.
Feedback: abhinav.mohapatra@exchange4media.com
