So what are these "PepsiMojis" all about? Pepsi used Canada last summer as a test market, and consumers loved them. They encouraged consumers to tweet pictures of their Pepsi bottle and used the hashtag #Pepsimoji. They even released a keyboard through the Apple App Store to celebrate "World Emoji Day" on July 17th. Pepsi used Canada as their test market because they are a nation that has multiple official languages- which allowed them to really test to see whether or not emojis are a "universal language". According to a presentation done by Pepsi's CEO Indra Nooyi, "more than 2 billion smartphone users globally send 6 billion emojis daily". This shows that Pepsi is following consumer trends and tapping into an area of smartphone technology that not a lot of brands have.
Pepsi also is segmenting consumers in this campaign, as they created emojis specifically for individual markets. For instance, they created one with a "traditional Thai costume" as well as a soccer-inspired emoji. I think this is a creative way of appealing to a wide range of consumers with different cultures and interests. In addition to the new packaging, they also teamed up with a designer named Jeremy Scott to create "PepsiMoji-inspired sunglasses" (photo is below). I think this is really unique and allows consumers to have another touchpoint with the brand and this new campaign.
Not only did I find this article interesting, I am able to make a connection to our course discussions. We have been talking a lot about differentiation, and the debate over how effective or ineffective it actually is. Coca-Cola was the innovator in this situation, as they decided to re-package their cans last summer with different names during their Share-A-Coke campaign. This was a way of differentiating themselves from other competitors within the industry. Now, Pepsi is trying to keep up with the leader in the industry, Coca-Cola, by following suit and doing a similar kind of campaign. This shows that to some extent, you must imitate your competitors' strategies in order to remain competitive. This relates directly to our class discussions from the past few weeks, and shows how it is often important to have points of similarity in addition to the points of difference.
I feel like this is a good way for Pepsi to differentiate itself from Coke. Even though the marketing campaign is similar, it is still a new spin on product packaging and customer engagement. These 2 soda giants compete very closely, and this campaign could give Pepsi the edge it needs to become more relevant than Coke. For example, I found out that Pepsi stock outperformed Coke returning 5.8% and 1.95% to shareholders respectively. Pepsi's differentiation of its marketing campaign could prove to be better in the long run.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/28/pepsico-stock-vs-coca-cola-which-soda-giant-is-bet.aspx
This is definitely a great example of a company (Coca-Cola) that innovated a great marketing campaign which resulted in a major competitor (Pepsi) imitating the strategy to try to achieve their own success. It goes to show that differentiation doesn't always have to be the goal for a brand, and that companies can derive inspiration from their competitors to put their own spin on a successful marketing tactic.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, the part about emoji's being universal through different languages reminded me about the Costanzo days, when he had us demonstrate the five different facial feature emotions that anyone from any culture can identify and display.