Pepsi’s new global campaign, “Live for Now,” is all about immediacy, or as its creators would have it, “the excitement of now.” So it seems fitting that the effort’s main digital ingredient is a cascade of recent Pepsi-themed tweets, brand-created content, and miscellaneous scraps of trending content.
For now this interactive experience, known as Pepsi Pulse, lives only at Pepsi.com, but CPG brand websites have limited reach – even sites for well-liked fizzy drinks. Pepsi and its agency partners know this, and so are planning to extend the content interface into display and digital out-of-home placements.
Digital agency Organic, one of six Omnicom-owned shops that created the global campaign, tells AdExchanger that the digital ad experience will replicate aspects of the website interface – including curated content and Twitter updates – within online display ads and interactive billboards. Those placements will follow the U.S. launch of the campaign, which kicks off this week.
“That’s the natural progression of where all this stuff will go,” said Organic executive creative director Brad Mancuso, of the display and DOOH strategy. He said interactive ads will echo the Pepsi.com site with its blend of curated tweets and brand-created content. “It’s about, ‘How do we distribute this curation?’” Mancuso said. “Digital out of home is a natural place for it.”
The digital elements of the campaign are collectively referred to as Pepsi Pulse, and in addition to tweets and popular content will include live streams of upcoming concerts. A version targeting a Hispanic audience will be called Mi Pepsi.
On Pepsi.com tweets tagged with #NOW and #LiveForNow intermingle with a brand-curated experience that will be updated hourly.
And Pepsi has also lined up some triggers to drive social activity around its chosen hashtags. Celebrities will issue challenges to followers; a still-unnamed Daily Deals partner will drive local engagement through incentives; and the planned concerts will be “Twitter-enabled,” though it’s not totally clear what that means.
A global rollout will follow the U.S. launch, but it remains to be seen whether Pepsi intends to deploy similar strategies to rope its overseas endorsers into its social strategy – for instance by asking Taiwanese star Show Luo, who has appeared in its ads, to tap his more than 12 million followers on Sina Weibo.
Pepsi didn’t immediately respond to a request for more information.
-Zach Rodgers
