Pepsi is putting its brand in the hands of Chinese consumers, and thousands are answering its call to develop a television commercial for mainland audiences.
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Just three weeks into the two-month promotion, which asks consumers to submit 200-word TVC scripts and vote on other entries at a NetEase-hosted website, 10,000 ideas have been generated and 35 million page views reported, including two million page views daily, with a total of over 1.5 million unique visitors seeking information on the campaign.
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But the most impressive aspect of the campaign isn't that its success is being driven entirely via the internet — Pepsi is building up a fan base through whispers on messageboards, blogs and chat sites, and the word is quickly spreading nationwide — but that the brand is empowering consumers as co-creators of content.
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"We wanted to put the consumer in the driver's seat in terms of how the content was developed, how that message was spread and eventually consumed," explains PepsiCola's Greater China marketing director Leo Tsoi. "We found that many brands were using the web but they lacked integration with the brand's essence."
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Pepsi isn't the first brand to hand over creative control to the consumer. Motorola's 'lypsyncing' campaign, developed last year, invited China's youth to create their own music performance on a minisite. The site recorded over 14 million page views in the first month and raised the brand's 'fun' perception by 18 per cent last year.
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Like Motorola, Pepsi's push taps into a global youth trend of creation and individual expression, as consumers use the web to develop content for blogs, films or music online. Ian Stewart, director of trend research at Synovate, who worked with adidas' 'fanatic opinion leaders' in Bangkok to design the adicolor launch and events at their new Thailand store — another initiative using consumers as creators — describes Pepsi's campaign as a global first. "It is taking what BMW has done with commissioning people to create short movies further, because Pepsi has gone to the basic consumer for content creation."
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For Pepsi's ad agencies, however, the initiative is triggering change. With consumers now in the driving seat for content creation, agencies are being called on for a more strategic role. "Even as a marketer, it was a different experience," says Tsoi. "It wasn't just a case of writing a brief and filing it out to agencies and waiting for ideas, media strategy and execution. The consumer has taken the role of marketer, agency and media owner, and we have to monitor the response everyday because it is now in the hands of consumers."
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And that response isn't always positive. Serial bloggers and critics have hit back at the brand, accusing it of piggybacking on blogs and messageboards to tap into China's vast community of digital users estimated at 10 million bloggers, 100 million web users and 300 million mobile phone carriers. Others are skeptical of the brand's programme. "We have to accept some uncertainty and that's what makes the communication dynamic. We can't stop people from posting negative comments but just have to find ways to present our case to consumers. You can't use traditional PR crisis management with these consumers," notes Tsoi. "They have mobile phones, digital cameras and computers, and they are running their own entertainment and media centers. They are marketing savvy and they use the same branding language we do."
