More than fizz and froth

While the recession hits the economies worldwide, the cola giants have been trying their bubbly best to get the fizz back into the lives of their target audience, through hope and optimism campaigns.

Pepsi began proceedings with its new logo, accompanied by a tagline “Every generation refreshes the world”. You can catch an entire set of creatives in this New Year video. On an aside, the (yet to be proved conclusively) brief for this campaign has caused much amusement. You really have to take a look – it is bizarre and includes everything from gravitational pull and thr relativity of space-time to Mona Lisa and the Bible!! (via psfk) Meanwhile, Coke rolled out its ‘Open Happiness’ campaign a few weeks later, complete with a massive campaign and 2 new Super Bowl spots, prompting the question “Who smiled first“. The answer turned out to be Obama, but Pepsi claimed that finally Coke was following them. Coke pointed out that it had started using smiley logos six months back.

Critics have been skeptical about Coke moving away from the ‘Coke side of life’. Pepsi, they say, having always been a youthful brand has been able to bring out a more buoyant and less laboured campaign. In India, they’ve decided to be totally Youngistan, with SRK no longer a brand ambassador, leaving us stuck with Ranbir Kapoor’s adventures. Some respite recently from Dhoni and gang, with the baap connection.

Meanwhile, these campaigns also made me wonder whether typical mass media communication and feel good campaigns are indeed the way to connect during such troubled times,  more so when I read this article by Tom Martin in AdAge. It talks about “the simple human need to connect to others.”

And that brings me to a brilliant campaign I’ve seen (virtually) – froth brand this time, instead of fizz- Starbucks’ “I’m In” campaign, (in association with ‘Hands On Network’) “ an initiative to make it easy to participate in the President-elect’s call for national service.” The campaign allows a person to pledge five hours or more of community service toward a local volunteer opportunity of choice. It rewards the person with a free coffee. The goal is to raise pledges in excess of one million hours of service from all over the country. You can catch the results here. This is what is correctly described as ‘marketing with meaning‘ – which includes several facets – social, personal, storytelling, disruptive, responsible, each of which gives individuals different sets of incentives to be part of the campaign. Starbucks timed the campaign brilliantly – Obama’s inauguration week, and got itself an Oprah Effect. It has all the ingredients required to make a consumer want to be associated with the campaign, and has used the social web very well.

Now I’m not sure of Coke/Pepsi in the US have tangible renditions of the happiness theme on ground, but I know several campaigns in India which have paid lip service to excellent themes/ideas and have ended up looking superficial. In the times and circumstances we live in, there are excellent opportunities for brands to genuinely do good to society within the sphere of their category, and thereby increase their equity in the consumer’s mind.  (Jaago re is a great example) I wonder how many brands will see this.

until next time, a lot can happen over coffee 🙂

PS. While on fizzy stuff, did you hear about the RSS launching cow’s urine as a soft drink? Called gau-jal, its undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”. Sumant suggests Mo (rarji) Desai in low riding jeans, basketball jersey and bling, as brand ambassador, and I suggested the tagline Pee yo! Wonder if Coke and Pepsi are pissed 😉