Film buff brings showbiz buzz to Pepsi brand

Flying nine celebrities to Jordan during the tense stand-off before the Iraq war would not have been everybody's idea of fun. But for Richard Lee, marketing VP for PepsiCo's beverages arm in China, the shoot for Pepsi's Nine Star relaunch campaign was one of the highlights of his life.

"The scale was the biggest we had ever done and the stars were not afraid to go there. One week before the shoot three people were kidnapped and one week after, there was a bombing in Jordan. It was extremely risky but they never said no," Lee recalls.

Lee's choice says a lot about him, and his take on marketing. The shoot itself, involving a crew of hundreds, would have struck a chord with the aspiring film-maker still within him — Lee had been accepted into film school after graduating, but turned it down after his parents persuaded him an MBA would be a better move.

That would not be the whole story however. Both the audacity of the shoot and the communal team effort that went into it chime with Lee's essential marketing philosophy — the best results come from an enthusiasm shared by everyone. At Pepsi, they have coined a special acronym for it, TEAM — Together Everyone Achieves More. For Lee his job as chief marketer means plotting a strategic vision for the company and his team, cultivating a culture that encourages open communication and, most importantly, inspiring and motivating people to excel.

"You have to unite everyone under one vision," Lee says. "That way everyone moves forward together." For Lee this means not just Pepsi staff but everyone involved with the brand. Celebrities are recruited as brand evangelists. Agency executives are part of the team too, and are expected to push Pepsi as much as Pepsi will push them. "The agency may want to do it as an entity but if individual employees don't have passion, they won't be pushing hard, and if you don't push the envelope you won't have breakthrough campaigns."

Faced with the twin challenges of rapid advances in technology rewriting the rules of media engagement, and a plethora of new products making consumers rethink their daily drinks repertoire, originality is non-negotiable for Lee. He is currently overseeing a bold new campaign in which much of the job of developing Pepsi's next TVC is handed over to consumers. It is a clever twist on the talent shows currently generating buzz in China. People who say they think outside the box have already limited themselves by deciding what the parameters of originality are, Lee says, arguing that the freshest ideas come from people who set their own rules.

"Think about Steve Jobs, he developed the iPod Nano while the iPod Mini was doing so well. He makes his own product line obsolete. Do you really think he looked at what his competitors are doing? No way. This is the essence of marketing, truly great brand-building, developed on your own essence, not what others are doing."

For the same reason, Lee says what competitors are doing is of little concern to him. "We don't look at Coke attitudes. If you just look at them, you are forced to react to what your competitors are thinking and doing."
This philosophy has taken Pepsi into relatively uncharted territory, experimenting with new media, and by doing so giving consumers a say over the brand, a direction that may make some marketers uncomfortable. "We're talking about dare for more. Daring has some part of risk-taking too and the dare for more part means achieve more, if you want to achieve more you have to give out more."

The film-making bug is still there — Lee finds time to take in a movie every night, no matter how late in the day he works. Although he still describes himself as an aspiring film-maker, toying with the idea of one day going back to film school to realise his childhood dream, he sees many parallels in his current role. "It's about showmanship, it's about creativity, it's about telling people, not telling people something, but about inspiring people rather than instructing people what your ideas are," he says. "This is one of the key aspects of doing marketing here at Pepsi."