These days, Pepsi Cola appears to be one of the world’s largest consumer brands in the field of food and drink, and, during the years of its existence, the company elaborated successful Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) campaign. The program involves contributing to the product development via introducing new positions and advancing firm production orientation via demonstrating high-quality drinks. In addition, the strategy of the company aims to establish excellent relationships with customers, including new ones.
Another objective for Pepsi Cola implies increasing sales among people engaged in sports activity both in a professional and amateurish manner. Therefore, these intentions and values are transmitted via different types of media, ensuring customers that Pepsi Cola is an essential accompaniment of all pleasant activities, making them even more enjoyable and memorable.
For instance, Pepsi Cola is actively promoted on television during football match translations. This medium is helpful for advancing the association between this drink and bright and joyful emotions, which encourages potential clients to try the product by creating a lasting impression. In addition, it responds to the aim of targeting the sports arena. Another example of Pepsi Cola promoting regards outdoor advertising, such as posters on billboards. This type of medium advances the high quality of drinks by highlighting its unique taste, which is useful for attracting new customers very quickly and without significant expenditures.
Pepsi Cola also sticks to placements in magazines, and this approach is beneficial for targeting a niche audience, such as sports amateurs, which matches the purposes of the company as well. Furthermore, today, the significance of digital advertisement cannot be underestimated, and, for this reason, Pepsi Cola adheres to its possibilities too. For instance, the company uses social media for promoting their drinks, such as advertising videos on YouTube. This method helps both to attract a great number of new customers and target niche audiences. In addition, it is useful for advancing the quality advantages and establishing excellent relationships with clients.
Despite the fact that all the examples mentioned earlier are placed in different advertising mediums, they have common features. All of them are aimed to adhere to the IMC campaign, which involves establishing the association between Pepsi drinks and enjoyment, highlighting the quality of taste, and attracting new customers.
It should also be mentioned that, apart from the IMC campaign, Pepsi Cola adheres to another marketing communication activity, which is sponsorship. Life Beyond Sport describes:
“This brand has got endorsement by players like Thierry Henry, Leo Messi, Frank Lampard, Kaka and Didier Drogba. Pepsi is the official soft drink of Major League Soccer and the US Soccer Federation”.
For example, Pepsi Cola participated in funding Football World Cup 2014 in Brazil. It launched a special campaign, which united the strongest football players, such as Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero, Englishman Jack Wilshere and Brazilian David Luiz, and created “superstar 2014 football squared” (Chapman, 2014, para. 1). Their portraits were placed on Pepsi cans, as it is shown in Picture 1.
The campaign promoted the same values and pursued the same objectives as IMC implies. The company was intended to create an association between their drink and bright, positive emotions. In addition, sponsorship supported the purpose of targeting an audience engaged in a sports activity. Consequently, the fact that it united the strongest and the most popular football players appeared to be the advantage of the sponsorship. However, the weakness could be the lack of a contract with Christiano Ronaldo, as there was a rivalry between Lionel Messi and him. Therefore, the presence of Messi could prevent Christiano Ronaldo’s fans from purchasing the drink.
Global Brands, Culture, and Advertisement
As a worldwide brand, Pepsi Cola needs to adjust its IMC and advertising companies to the specialties of the local people, who are considered to be targeted by campaigns. For this reason, there is a difference in promoting drinks in different parts of the world. It is possible to notice how advertisements reflect cultures and what appeals are applied in order to draw the attention of a particular audience. Therefore, the purpose of this part of the paper is to compare Pepsi billboards in China and in the United States.
For instance, while presenting Pepsi advertising in the US, the creators adhere to the local traditions and tendencies. Cardi B appears to be one of the most popular celebrities among the U. S. population, so she was invited to participate in the video (Cardi B Live, 2019). In addition, the advertisement includes American traditions on celebrating Christmas, such as presents delivered by Santa Claus (Cardi B Live, 2019).
In addition, the commercial involves all the values and tendencies, which are actively promoted these days. Furthermore, the fact that Christmas, one of the most significant holidays, was used in the advertisement. The unique qualities of Cardi B, which appears to be extremely relevant in the context of present-day developments, are also highlighted in the video (Cardi B Live, 2019). In this commercial, Pepsi attempts to provide an association between joyful and holiday mood and drinking their products via implementing video, demonstrating the process of celebration and receiving gifts. Consequently, this fact appears to be the appeal of the campaign, which is intended to encourage customers and potential ones to purchase the drink.
As for the advertising campaign launched in China, it targets another local tradition, which is Chinese New Year. The video was intended to show the moment of family reunion, which is a widely spread custom for celebrating this holiday (Wong Sai Meng, 2019). It depicts the difficulties of family relationships between members of different generations. In addition, it includes the problems of color blindness of grandmother, which is critical during Chinese New Year, when the red color is used everywhere. The advertisement includes the unique specialties of this day and the traditions of this celebration (Wong Sai Meng, 2019). It reflects Chinese culture of paying attention to this day and the tradition of celebrating Chinese New Year.
Therefore, both advertising campaigns are adjusted to the unique features, which are characteristic of particular cultural background. The appeal for both campaigns is chosen correctly, as it responds to the interest of potential and current clients. Therefore, the advertisement may reveal some unique features of both American and Chinese cultures, which are targeted in commercial videos. For this reason, it may be concluded that Pepsi adheres to the localization of products instead of standardization. This approach is beneficial, as it allows to address unusual requests of customers and, as a result, increase profit worldwide. In conclusion, this method makes the advertising campaign successful and contributes to drawing the attention of numerous clients.
References
Cardi B Live. (2019). Cardi B Christmas Pepsi commercial 2019. YouTube. Web.
Chapman, M. (2014). Pepsi signs up Messi to ambush Coke’s World Cup sponsorship. Campaign. Web.
The top football sponsors in the world. (n. d.). Web.
Wong Sai Meng. (2019). Pepsi Chinese New Year film 2019. YouTube. Web.