LIGHTING UP LIVES

TitleLIGHTING UP LIVES
BrandPEPSICO PAKISTAN
Product / ServicePEPSI
CategoryC02. Use of Social in a PR campaign
EntrantBBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN
Entrant Company BBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN
Advertising Agency BBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Aamir Allibhoy BBDO Pakistan General Manager
Syed Azeem Afzal Impact Proximity General Manager
Faisal Durrani BBDO Pakistan Deputy General Manager
Jamayal Tanweer BBDO Pakistan Account Director
Aamna Rahim BBDO Pakistan Creative Manager
Moiz Khan BBDO Pakistan Associate Creative Manager
Alize Munir BBDO Pakistan Community Executive
Assam Khalid BBDO Pakistan Strategic Planning Director
Ali Rez BBDO Pakistan Creative Director

The Campaign

OBJECTIVE: Pepsi documented an initiative to provide solar powered lights made of plastic bottles in Northern Pakistan where people have no access to electricity. Our challenge was to raise awareness of this initiative, get the attention of those who can help, and provide them with a solution to make a difference. The people we targeted, are the more fortunate influencers who also face power shortages but have managed to find alternate solutions to sustain themselves. Strategy: Create empathy, get the attention of top influencers by letting them experience the problem, have them solve it and then go on to spread the word. IDEA: We started the conversation online about black outs. This was followed by a PR event to which top influencers, celebrities and members of the media were invited. At the event, the documentary was followed by an unexpected black out. They experienced something they were fully aware of, yet never affected by: Lack of electricity. Then we showed them how easy it was to make the change: 1 tweet 1 light. The impact created with the first hand experience at the event helped the campaign reach record breaking levels of engagement. The right choice of audience: celebrities, popular humanitarians and philanthropists resulted in tens of thousands of organic views for the documentary and global share-ablity.

The Brief

Our objective was to raise awareness to Pepsi’s initiative. Instead of airing it on all media channels both digital and conventional, we decided to make it bigger. The research showed how behaviours change if people are convinced on something’s authenticity and it’s easier to build that trust among a larger population with an alliance. We found that in some celebrities who’re influential with a trusted humanitarian profile. With our target group both online and offline; already following them, we started with making our influencers experience the problem and convincingly showed them a simple solution to solve it.

Results

The very start of the campaign had all local online advertising fraternities talking about the brand within 2 days, getting the attention we wanted. With our key influencers creating a stir at our PR event that followed, the campaign hashtag was organically trending in the country within 4 hours. This made Pepsi the first brand in Pakistan to have achieved that. The tweets kept increasing as the brand went to more places lighting up lives. 2 weeks into the campaign, online coverage of the installation process at one of the areas, resulted in the campaign hashtag organically trending the second time, making another record. The two month long campaign accumulated 38 Million impressions for the campaign hashtag, 3.5 Million video views, 3% increased brand love and a phenomenal 27% volume increase [PepsiCo Data] helping us light up 4 entire villages.

Execution

We made our audience realise how something that they take for granted - electricity - is what a huge population of the country is deprived of. This created conversations relevant to the service and identified the problem. The key influencers and celebrities invited at the PR event experienced the problem first hand, only to find out that there's an easy way to solve it. As they learnt how their tweets could change lives, they only tweeted more. The campaign was executed as originally planned, and in 2 months, helped us achieve the most important goal of removing darkness from people’s lives

The Situation

Pepsi was working to resolve a major problem of the country and we wanted to make sure the initiative turns into a movement. There is a huge population capable of helping the underprivileged if only they knew how to. We took that as an opportunity and not only made them experience the problem first hand but empowered them to solve it as well. With an online audience who tweet multiple times a day, we gave their tweets the power to change lives which convinced them to spread the awareness for us and become a part of lighting up lives.

The Strategy

Strategy We got on board celebrities and key influencers and made them experience the problem: Lack of electricity. Right when they thought, ‘this has to be changed’ we showed them an easy solution to make the difference. Targeting The brand’s target audience is the youth. It has a positioning of living in the now. Making your moment instead of waiting for the moment. With this campaign the brand gave its audience the opportunity to take matters in their own hands and solve the problem themselves instead of waiting for the ‘system’ to resolve itself, thus reinforcing the brand essence with the right audience. Pepsi already had a huge chunk of existing customers, who influenced new ones as well.