Once the default choice, cola is not as cool as it once was with plethora of new trendier competitors stealing share. The goal of this work was to harness the power of football in a modern and unexpected way to engage the next generation of cola consumer, put the brand front of mind and re-establishing brand relevance.

To do this, three objectives informed our strategy:

- Drive brand fame among football fans:

To grab their attention by leveraging our audiences' passions.

- Drive engagement and participation:

To stop thumbs in-feed, drive meaningful engagement and participation.

- Be the world’s most-loved football entertainment brand:

Staying true to the brand DNA, to drive brand love through unexpected entertainment experiences.

The idea was simple. At a time when football and culture were in a state of flux and Gen Z were taking to new platforms to find new forms of entertainment, Pepsi unlocked a never-seen-before level of access enabling fans to play alongside their heroes for the first time.

TikTok’s Duet feature gave us the perfect vehicle to do this. The #PepsiChallenge was a choreographed football routine which used TikTok’s new split screen functionality to enable fans to freestyle with the likes of Leo Messi, Paul Pogba, Shanice Van De Sanden and Jadon Sancho.

The challenge was accessible and easy for fans to do, yet difficult to master. The challenge gave young ballers an outlet to flaunt their own skills with pride and ultimately share with friends. The idea was to create films that provide social currency for fans and ‘show what they can do’.

The modern football fan has evolved. In the past, exposure to elite players was restricted to the 90 mins, however today, fans now also enjoy unfettered access to players off-the-pitch and the game around the game.

As a result, player influence is stronger than ever with fans developing an insatiable thirst to follow every move and get closer to their idols.

Our strategy was to close the gap between the fan and player, to do so in a way that was distinctively Pepsi and inherently entertaining.

Through research we identified the cross-cultural intersection of football+ music as our way to do this. We wanted to disrupt social feeds with iconic off-the-pitch entertainment which subverted and remixed two of the most powerful cultural passion points for our audience to create fresh and unique entertainment.

Finally, and crucially, we wanted to enable user generated content, knowing this could supercharge reach exponentially.

We released films of our players that fans could duet with at home.

We put the product at the heart of the narrative. Fans passed the ball back and forth with the player, before an unexpected twist, in which the player steals the Pepsi can from the fan, connecting to the TVC narrative in which the players compete with one another for a Pepsi.

Music is the lifeblood of TikTok so we worked with Burna Boy and Becky G to create a bespoke track that would form the soundtrack to the challenge. Paul Pogba also challenged his friend Burna Boy to a duet.

To maximise reach we launched the content across player channels, to their 250m+ following, then supported with duets from the most influential voices in football culture. Our global team of 18 influencers took on the challenge; sparking UGC worldwide including Brazil, Egypt, UK, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The numbers were staggering. The campaign drove brand fame globally with 3.2 billion views over the 6 week campaign period.

With over 47 million likes and 3m+ shares of the content from fans, the campaign had a leading engagement rate of 4.73%, almost triple the benchmark. Most impressively though, 584,000 Duet videos were created by fans, showing its massive appeal to the brand’s Gen Z audience.

The duet performed exceptionally well across player and influencer channels too. Messi’s duet became the most viewed piece of content ever across his channel at the time with 35.7m views, whilst our influencers delivered 15.3m views, 471% above planned.

Finally, as well as delivering fame and engagement for the brand, it grew Pepsi’s equity in football and entertainment. Brand recall was at 87% versus a benchmark of 31%*, and enjoyment was at 63% against a 34% benchmark*.

*TikTok