THE STING CHALLENGE

TitleTHE STING CHALLENGE
BrandPEPSICO
Product / ServiceSTING
CategoryA01. Fast Moving Consumer Goods
EntrantBBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN
Idea Creation BBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN
PR BBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN
Production BBDO PAKISTAN Lahore, PAKISTAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Jamayal Tanweer BBDO Pakistan Account Director
Aamir Allibhoy BBDO Pakistan General Manager
Syed Azeem Afzal Impact Proximity General Manager
Ali Rez Impact BBDO Regional Creative Director
Assam Khalid BBDO Pakistan Strategy & Planning Director
Moiz Khan BBDO Pakistan Creative Group Head
Alize Munir BBDO Pakistan Community Manager
Shahzaib Hussain BBDO Pakistan Art Director
Haseeb Akram BBDO Pakistan Art Director
Aamna Rahim BBDO Pakistan Creative Manager
Mubashra Khalid PepsiCo Marketing Manager
Natasha Haider PepsiCo Brand Manager

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. 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.

Creative 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.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The campaign was incredibly successful in every aspect. 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. Follow-up PepsiCo research confirmed that energy credentials for Sting went up a mind-boggling 10 points - suggesting change in mindset and behavior of selecting Sting as an energy drink, while sales increased by a knockout 52%.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Through the use of a social platform, we managed to reach each user directly and invited them to engage with the platform in order to meet a challenge. The creative idea utilized specific social media functionality such as the "Like" or the "Comment" buttons in order to join the activity. This was a first-of-its-kind promotion in Pakistan: one that pitted a professional boxer against an average social media user.

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.

Links

Social Media URL