The CSD category is more competitive than ever before - consumers have to make tough choices about what brand to tune into and which to buy from.

Having unique insight into what excites and engages consumers, Pepsi is uniquely positioned to break through the crowded space and grab the spotlight. To capture consumers attention, Pepsi needs to keep fans and consumers engaged by identifying and leveraging seasonal opportunities with mass cultural relevance. Tapping into these consumer-facing touchpoints with a nimble approach to innovation and strategic PR pushes enables the brand to make the most of real time cultural moments. What is our cultural moment for spring?

Our goal was to spark two way dialogue with our consumer, and to deliver 350M impressions and 30 placements.

With a commercialization budget of $50K for 12,000 units, and only $100K in paid media to create national buzz.

At the heart of Pepsi's brand identity is unapologetic enjoyment. The brand’s purpose and north star is to enable moments of unapologetic enjoyment for our consumers in their every-day life. After a year of nothing but bad news around the world, Pepsi saw a void of joy and happiness for consumers. Pepsi wanted to kick off spring with a smile.

This Spring, Pepsi brought together two iconic brands to launch a PEEPS marshmallow-flavored Pepsi.

The limited edition innovation was targeted to all those active on social through a contest that had people showing us how they were #HangingWithMyPeeps. The entries began pouring in and people were tagging each other to make sure their friends were in on the action. In an apparent fail from the brand, fans started pointing out how we had missed the mark by not calling the product, ‘PEEPSI’. This led to a groundswell of response.

Pepsi and PEEPS fanatics share many similarities; unapologetic, fiercely passionate and extremely loyal. Additionally, Pepsi has a stellar reputation and track-record for unique product collaborations and PEEPS is well known for its ownership of the spring-time cultural zeitgeist. Combining this brand fan synergy, with a culturally relevant spring-time moment in March, enabled PR to effectively message the drop as a limited time, highly exclusive product collaboration from two iconic brands that broke through pop culture.

Introducing PEPSI x PEEPS; a new, one-of-a-kind collaboration with the PEEPS brand. The two iconic brands introduced a delicious new beverage, combining the refreshing taste of PEPSI cola with the pillowy-soft and sweet PEEPS marshmallow flavor. With only the chance to win the hottest spring product through a sweepstakes, consumer excitement for the distinctive mini can design in the three most well known PEEP colors, pink, yellow and blue.

After we announced the product, we doubled down on the engagement and buzz, tapping into an already popular trend but with a unique Peeps spin: dioramas.

The brand recreated two of the most iconic moments in our history with the marshmallow creatures and gave consumers one more thing to get excited about.

We created a key visual animatic to excite consumers, our packaging resembled the classic PEEPS packaging with a unique PEPSI X PEEPS design on each can.

Pepsi X Peeps dominated the internet and airwaves immediately after launch – permeating elusive national late-night shows, early morning news segments.

The collab peaked at #7 national trending topics on Twitter on launch, and showed up on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America, Today Show and Saturday Night Live to name a few.

The campaign delivered over 14B impressions (goal: 350M impression) and 3,067 media placements (goal: 30+ placement) surpassing the goal many times over. 70% of the coverage included a photo or video of the product and the sentiment was highly positive at 83%.

Press cementing the limited edition drop as the cultural moment of spring. Fans that missed the chance to win could now bid for it on eBay for $1000. On social, the campaign delivered 21MM impressions and exceeded our sweepstakes goals by 60%.