• Situation - The diet soda category was a fast-growing category in India. But

Pepsi Black was still a nascent brand with a new proposition - ‘Max Taste, Zero

Sugar.’

Furthermore, repeated consumer research showed that while people loved the

taste of Pepsi Black, there was hardly any awareness about the brand.

• Brief – Get Indians hooked on the new Pepsi Black

• Objectives –

a. Drive mass awareness for the brand.

b. With only 0.91% share of trade in the Indian black cola category for

PepsiCo. We wanted to leverage the tailwinds in the category and grow

the share of trade of Pepsi Black to over 1%.

c. Cross the golden milestone of 1 million packs sold in a year for Pepsi Black

for the first time in the brand’s history.

We realized that nostalgia was a powerful force in India to achieve iconicity on a

mass scale. Success of Bollywood blockbusters such as RRR & KGF were testament to this.

But how can we use nostalgia to sell our core proposition around taste & zero sugar?

We found the answer close to home. We decided to recreate the iconic Cindy

Crawford Pepsi ad from the 1990s.

The Cindy Crawford film shows two young boys ogling at a chilled can of Pepsi

instead of the stunning Cindy Crawford, making it a powerful demonstration of

product superiority. We wanted to capture this same emotion featuring Bollywood

superstar Jacqueline Fernandes in the role of Cindy Crawford.

We were talking to upscale Gen Z Indians living in major metropolitan centers such as

Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore.

The mindset of our audience was representative of what we like to call ‘Challenger

India’ – an emerging India which is confident, irreverent & believes in doing things their

way.

They know they have options and exercise them without hesitation.

To capture the attention of such an audience as a new brand, we had to flood their

mind-space with Pepsi Black across different touchpoints.

Our integrated campaign was present across multiple touchpoints across the consumer journey -

a) TVC – Created a disruptive film starring Bollywood superstar Jacqueline

Fernandes.

b) Influencer collaboration –Tied up with popular influencers to drive the message of

the superior taste of Pepsi Black to their millions of followers.

c) Social media content – Created memes to place the brand at the heart of popular

conversation.

d) OTT – pre-roll films for leading OTT platforms to maintain a sustained presence.

e) Outdoor – Placed billboards to drive maximum visibility for Pepsi Black’s new

proposition.

f) E-commerce – Created pop-up notifications, e-banners, in-app communications on

leading Indian ecommerce platforms such as Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart & Flipkart.

g) On-ground – Set-up special Pepsi Black stalls at major multiplex cinema halls in

order to drive trials for the new Pepsi Black.

Business results

• We achieved a YOY sales growth of 85% for Pepsi Black, which outpaced

even Pepsi’s YOY sales growth of 28% in India for the first time ever.

• Our trade share increased by to 1.3% from 0.91% achieving our target of

growing trade share to over 1%.

• Pepsi black sold 1.035 million packs in 2022, successfully crossing the golden

milestone of 1 million packs sold.

Social results

• Garnered a total reach of 30.92 million

• Generated 36.5 million impressions.

• Our meme campaign also generated an engagement of 875,000 on Instagram

& Facebook.