The Campaign

During summer soft drink brands use advertising to showcase Australians savouring their product in the summer sun. But despite having one of the best summers in the world, Australian professionals often miss out experiencing this representation of summer as they’re often caught up working back late. A 2017 study supported this, ranking Australian work-life balance as the worst in the developed world; 27th out of 37 countries. Even when they do finish work before the sun has set, they either lack the motivation to get out and enjoy summer to the fullest or have no idea what to do to revel in those last few hours before the sun has set. To respond to this consumer tension, it was therefore imperative that Pepsi Max not resort to category norms but rather provide something of value to Australian professionals; the inspiration and tools to leave their desk and max their summer.

Creative Execution

Every ad served was designed to make it as easy as possible for Aussies to opt in for a Max Your Summer experience. Utilising data, we captured Australian working professionals through Spotify, mobile-news and office OOH media, we were able to be hyper-targeted in the exact moments when our audience would be predisposed to inspirational content motivating them to Max their Summer. We targeted them when they were listening to music at work in a partnership with Spotify where we recorded over 1000 unique audio executions invited working professionals to nearby events. During lunch, we targeted them when they were browsing the news across their mobile and used their GPS to show how far away they were from a nearby event via Google maps. And as they left work, we overtook OOH panels in office buildings and provided dynamic messages of the range of events that were available nearby.

Our hyper relevant campaign drove big increases in key metrics for Pepsi Max across summer. As a result of the campaign Pepsi Max experienced significant sales growth, rising 3.4% over summer. Pepsi Max continues to be the fastest growing no sugar cola brand in Australia, increasing this speed of growth by 177%. The campaign achieved significant shifts increasing relevance with a 16% lift in preference as ‘The Most Popular Cola’ choice. Our unique audio ads resulted in the largest scale of dynamic advertising used on Spotify in the world with nearly 1000 different audio messages created and distributed during the campaign. This resulted in our largest shift in relevance by a single channel with a relevance score of 81% above the Spotify industry benchmark. We even swayed 9% of the Spotify audience to re-consider Pepsi Max, stating they were likely to consider purchasing after been exposed to the ad.

The Pepsi Max Summer campaign utilised data and media in hyper-targeted ways to cut through the competitive clutter and increase relevance by serving inspirational messages and content personalised to when, the relevance of the moment to our audience, and where, the location of our audience. By applying such a focus on when and where our audience would receive our campaign messages, we were able to successfully motivate campaign action and participation, whilst also increasing consideration to purchase to Pepsi Max.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In the summer of 2017, Pepsi sought out to help every working Aussie to Max their Summer. In a media first, we negotiated a unique data partnership with Time Out – Australia’s number one platform providing inspiration and tips on what to do across Australia. For the first time ever, they agreed to release all their summer events’ data for 1000s events across Australia. Armed with Time Out’s event data and a plug in we built via Google Maps, we developed an algorithm that analysed a users’ location data, day of the week and time of day to dynamically customise the message and direct users to nearby events within walking distance which allowed them to Max Their Summer. Throughout the work week we provided our audience with details of nearby events and motivated them to act with specifics on when, where and how to get there.