The Campaign

To hammer home the personality of an energy drink, we decided to set up a bout between a former boxing world champion - Amir Khan - and the Pakistani people. Boxing, of course, requires a fair amount of energy, so our invite was simple: drink some Sting and get energized enough to take on a professional boxer. If you beat him, you get to train with him in real life. The beauty of the idea was in how we made this an interesting, and more importantly, fair fight: we established the social media space as a boxing ring, and utilized social media functionality features, such as the "Like" button, or the "Share" link to fight.

Execution

The invite was simple: take on Amir Khan in a fight on the social media space. People could challenge him to perform boxing exercises in real life depending on how they used the functionality on our Facebook page. We introduced the campaign first by simply positioning Amir Khan's boxing fist versus the fist that everybody has access to on Facebook: the like button. An initial challenge was to invite people to like our Facebook page. For every 100 likes we got, Amir Khan would have to skip rope once. The total number of likes would determine the total number of times Amir would need to skip rope within 60 seconds. An unprecedented number of likes for Pakistan - 44,000 - floored Amir. The first challenge was then followed by two more, using the Comment and Share functionalities. Amir Khan eventually lost the best of three competition 2-1.

The campaign was incredibly successful in every aspect. Tier 1: Outcomes/Awareness: We went viral fast and were picked up by all the major national news channels. Almost 47 million hashtag impression spread the word fast, and we reached 13 million people on Facebook alone, an incredible achievement in Pakistan. Tier 2: Knowledge/Consideration: Follow-up PepsiCo research confirmed that energy credentials for Sting went up a mind-boggling 10 points, and consideration now moved towards the selection of an energy drink. Tier 3: Business results: Sales increased by a knockout 52%.

The Situation

We used a social media platform - and its functionality features - to take on a challenge with a well-loved professional boxer. Never before had a brand in Pakistan utilized this strategy, and we had calculated the resulting PR worth of this exercise. It was ultimately an incredible PR coup that led to successful sales results.

The Strategy

The data we gathered indicated that awareness of Sting as an energy drink was low. Our target audience, mostly young Pakistani males, were not recognizing Sting as an energy drink, but rather a normal fizzy beverage. We decided to boost Sting's energy credentials firstly by recruiting a professional in a high-energy sport - boxing - and then making everybody accessible to taking on a challenge issued by him on the social media space. We knew the PR value this would bring: Amir Khan carries a lot of respect amongst Pakistanis, and this would be the first time a brand was going to invite people to take on a challenge against him. We even initiated an initial roadblock of several news channels that would cover the live event once the challenge was issued.