Be it thousands of our movies, or gods being represented as couples, Indians grow up on a diet of coupling and pursuits of romantic bliss. In Indian movie and music industry, every story is a tragedy if the single doesn’t become a couple. With 7 out of 10 youth being single (15-30 years), this creates peer pressure and social judgement making majority of youngsters feel like losers.

Relationship status defines their social worth. Especially on the valentine’s day when society, brands, pop-culture are all celebrating love, they feel even more isolated.

Pepsi, the brand that embodies irrepressibility of youth challenged this and celebrated people’s choice to remain single by…

•Empowering all singles to believe that they are not incomplete if they are not in a relationship.

•Bringing people together and fire up conversations around this prejudiced behaviour

•Share Pepsi’s content on mass direct platforms to drive awareness and build virality

Our movie and music industry has been largely responsible for mass conditioning of love and pursuit of coupling. Entertainment had a role to play in creating this pressure on singles. So, when it was time to bring about change, Pepsi tapped into the same power of influence of the entertainment industry to celebrate singlehood in a new light.

IDEA: Disrupt Valentine’s Day with a branded music single for all singles and normalize singlehood. Kickstart a mobile entertainment driven social movement which declared ‘RELATIONSHIP STATUS SHALL NO LONGER DEFINE SOCIAL STATUS’.

On Valentine’s Day a Bollywood-style music single: SWAG SE SOLO (Solo with Swag) was released on T-Series, world’s largest YouTube Music Channel. Featuring superstar and India’s most popular single Salman Khan, as the flagbearer of a movement that celebrated the unattached. Spurring a three-day challenge on TikTok, empowering community of all single Indians to declare their solo-status with pride.

AUDIENCE:

Single brave hearts subjected to judgements and societal pressure just because they are not in a relationship. Time to stand by the community of 100 million singles like no other brand ever has!

INSIGHT:

Pepsi consumer study revealed 7 out of 10 Indian youth (15-30 years) are single and get subjected to prejudice like “How come no partner?”, “Strange…not married yet?”, “Sorry we won’t rent flat to singles”, “No entry for singles”. Your relationship status becomes your social status. Looked down upon, labelled as incomplete, singles are made to feel like second-class citizens.

STRATEGY:

Empower singles and challenge the status quo that ‘Love makes us complete’. Relationship status should not reduce anyone’s social worth. Being single is a matter of personal choice and freedom. If love is celebrated, then being single should be equally celebrated. Thereby leave Pepsi’s unique stamp on Valentine’s Day to connect meaningfully with all youth.

1. Influence the masses by co-creating the anthem with industry’s finest entertainers.

Composed by rising star Tanishq Bagchi, directed by ace choreographer Remo D’Souza, starring Bollywood superstar Salman Khan – this was cause-marketing in its foot-tapping best!

2. Collaborating with the world’s largest YouTube Channel, T-Series

Launched for mobile viewing this was the celebratory soundtrack of a singleton’s life directly streamed to 120 Million subscribers.

3. Disrupt social media: Engage with a viral challenge on TikTok

Kickstarted by Salman and popularised by 200 micro-influencers Pepsi instigated singles to be unapologetic about their relationship status on social media. Our influencers spread the narrative of self-love by wearing the badge of being solo with pride with ‘Swag Se Solo’ interactive filters. Launched as a mobile optimized video-sharing challenge on Tiktok, a three-day Pepsi #SwagStepChallenge dared the unattached Indian flaunt their singlehood proudly with a cool social media dance challenge.

Valentine’s Day became truly inclusive - society & media celebrated the unattached!

•With 99% positive sentiment and over 130 million views, Pepsi’s #SwagSeSolo was

? Most viewed music video of Valentine’s Day.

? Top 3 on YouTube Music during Valentine’s Week.

? One of YouTube’s biggest branded music of Year 2020.

•Within just 4 days with over 50,000 User Generated Videos celebrating singlehood, the TikTok social challenge got 5.4 billion views!!

•Fastest branded hashtag challenge globally averaging 540 videos uploaded/hour (9 videos per minute)!

•Attracted 200+ earned media stories achieving USD 6,13,000 in PR Value (INR 45 Million). Most importantly generated more than 150,000 conversations around this issue.

Pepsi becomes ‘Choice of the Young Generation’:

•Overshot operating Sales Volume target in month of Feb-20 by 1.3x vs a year earlier.

•Beats Coke on key KPIs of youth (Q1’20 vs Q1’19) with a positive movement of 10 points