Pepsi has recently launched "their version" of the Thumbs Up commercial, featuring Akshay Kumar, the all-brawn, albeit not-so-young, Bollywood hero traversing the roads of an Asian city in a run-down car after his favourite cola.
Released on YouTube, and expected to be on air soon, the Pepsi commercial takes off from where the Thumbs Up commercial left.
It stars two youngsters who visit Kumar in his hospital room where he is lying after some dare devil stunts to get a bottle of Thumbs Up. Mocking his efforts at "his age", the teenage duo steals the thunder (Thumbs Up positioning) as well as Akshay's girl, advising the "hurt" Kumar to drink Pepsi as the world is "Youngistan Meri Jaan", Pepsi's new brand message.
"The creative brief for the campaign was: Old gives way to the new. Pepsi is the quintessential soul mate of the youth, and Youngistaan's point of view is that the only muscle one needs to have is the brain," explains Hari Krishnan, vice president and client services director, JWT.
This was also Pepsi's first ever foray into YouTube, a free video sharing website. With IPL commanding majority of airtime, JWT decided to run the spoof on YouTube. "We will continue to build the same through interventions in the near future," says PepsiCo India executive vice-president (marketing), cola, Sandeep Singh Arora.
"It is viral marketing and expands big time," says Krishnan.
