• Situation - Pepsi Black was trailing its main competitor Coke Zero across major metrics such as trials and consideration in the zero sugar cola category.

• Brief – Get Indians hooked on the new Pepsi Black.

• Objectives –

a. At least double sales volume growth from 17% currently to 34%.

b. Drive a higher rate of considerations & trials for Pepsi Black vis-à-vis its main competitor, Coke Zero.

c. Bring the brand to the centre of popular culture and surpass media average engagement & average impression benchmarks of 500,000 and 20 million respectively.

Black is the new Red

Indians automatically saw the colour red when they thought of diet cola. That’s how much Coke Zero was winning the perception war with no player in the market to challenge them.

Being masters of pop culture, Pepsi decided to craft a distinctive proposition. We observed that this generation of anti-hustlers and empaths were not satisfied with just one option. They strive to make positive choices by exploring healthier and tastier alternatives with distinct characters of their own.

We decided to conjure up some ‘black’ magic and, tapping into the desire of young Indians for a cola that refused to compromise on taste for health,

launched Pepsi Black’s new brand proposition – “Max Taste, Zero Sugar”

We further gave Gen Z Indians a platform to express their choices through our HUMN fashion & NFT collections and ensured that Black was the new Red.

The film begins on an extremely hot and sunny day. We see a female bike rider pull-up to a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Immediately she’s got the attention of the young men already there. The rider takes of her helmet, revealing herself as Bollywood superstar Jacqueline Fernandes!

She gets off the bike and starts walking. The boys are awestruck, unable to take their eyes of her. Jacqueline then presses a button, collects her can of Pepsi Black from the tray of the dispenser and takes a sip.

As the boys continue to stare in her direction, one of them remarks at how amazing the new Pepsi Black is, revealing that they are actually ogling at the Pepsi Black, not Jacqueline!

We cut to Jacqueline letting out a satisfied sigh as we see our end slate with Pepsi Black’s new proposition- Max taste, Zero sugar.

a. Objective – At least double sales volume growth from 17% currently to 34%.

Result - We achieved a YOY sales growth of 85% for Pepsi Black.

b. Objective – Drive a higher rate of considerations & trials for Pepsi Black vis-à-vis its main competitor, Coke Zero.

Result –

• We achieved 32.5% higher average consideration scores than Coke Zero post-campaign.

• We achieved 15.12% higher average trial scores than Coke Zero

post-campaign.

c. Objective – Bring the brand to the centre of popular culture and surpass media average engagement & average impression benchmarks of 500,000 and 20 million respectively.

Result –

• We achieved a total reach of 30.92 million & 36.5 million impressions generated.

• Through HUMN we sold out our entire stock of 400,000 limited edition cans.

• Our NFT campaign achieved 1.09 billion total engagements.