The Brief

Solar bottle lights are recycled plastic Pepsi bottles installed on roofs to refract sunlight into 55W of light. The brand has installed over 20,000 lights through the combination of volunteer action, online donation and direct sponsorship. To spread the project, Pepsi helped establish a center to train volunteers and educated companies, schools and people on how to create and install lights. A model community, wherein every home is lit by at least 2 bottle bulbs, was established to help take the model across the global Pepsi system.

Creative Execution

Pepsi wanted to extend its long-running campaign: ‘SarapMagbago’ (Change tastes good). True to its commitment to change, the brand continues to find innovative solutions to real problems to engage the youth in creating positive change.So the brand aimed to help tackle the issue of daytime lighting in the Philippines. In Filipino urban poor communities, most homes have no natural light source so lights must be kept on day and night, causing electric bills to rise. More often than not, these families choose to live in the dark to keep their children fed. Pepsi collaborated with My Shelter Foundation on the Liter of Light project to help brighten Filipino lives.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Solar bottle lights are recycled plastic Pepsi bottles installed on roofs to refract sunlight into 55W of light. The brand has installed over 20,000 lights through the combination of volunteer action, online donation and direct sponsorship. Community management was magnified online and via events such as mas runs that collected and recycles used bottles for the activity.To further spread the project, Pepsi helped establish a center to train volunteers and educated companies, schools and people on how to create and install lights. A model community, wherein every home is lit by at least 2 bottle bulbs, was established to help take the model across the global Pepsi system.

Results

Over 10,000 volunteers gathered, 20,000 bulbs installed, 46,666 lives brightened. The project received Best of the Best at the 2012 PepsiCo Global Performance with Purpose Awards. It also gained the support of the Philippine government and was specially commended by the U.N Climate Chief, Christiana Figueres, at the 2011 World Climate Conference. It was covered by BBC, NHK and other networks, and presented at TED X in Dubai and Mumbai. The project is now being spread in Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia, Vietnam, Mumbai and Colombia.