Here at Pepsi we wanted to educate the consumers on Pepsi Max’s taste in order to convert them.

But this is a story of Davis Vs Goliath: Coke communicates massively on Coke Zero and benefits from loyal consumers who perceive the taste as superior. Pepsi Max, with has a lower number needed to punch above its weight.

We decided to assume our challenger role and to come back to the essence of Pepsi Max: humor and impertinence! We boldly revived the Pepsi vs Coke battle, teasing Coke’s most popular attributes to break down Pepsi Max’s taste and sugar barrier.

We created social adverts that made a cheeky reference to Coke's adverts - thus reviving the battle and showing that Pepsi Max has a humorous side too.

But being Bold means taking risks, so we set up a taskforce with our legal, internal community

manager, brand and team to evaluate Coke reaction and assess risks, adjust copy writing, and set up migration plans.

We used Facebook and Instagram for an engagement campaign to target our younger audience. We created a community of these social channels and responded to them in real time.

We posted the social adverts every two weeks over a total length of 10 weeks on social media platforms.

- 90% of positive comments (vs 5% to 10% in previous campaigns), with consumers defending us against Coke fan, praising our humour, or vowing to try Pepsi Max

- 10.3% engagement rate (vs 1.3% - 3% avg)

- 5.6 Million Total interactions (29k reactions, 4k comments)