New Year marketing going to extremes? Pepsi's brainstorm is amazing

Why can a brand IP that has been operating for 8 years create attention again and again during the New Year?

At the beginning of 2019, China's independently developed Chang'e-4 successfully achieved the first soft landing of a human probe on the far side of the moon. It also transmitted back the world's first close-up image of the far side of the moon through the Queqiao relay satellite, unveiling the mystery of the ancient far side of the moon.

▲ Yes, it is the one that never faces the earth

The back side of the moon is said to be home to aliens

In addition to rushing to change their phone screensavers, astronomy enthusiasts and media at home and abroad are frantically checking their phones, looking forward to good news from Chang'e 4.

Immediately afterwards, on the 11th, the “Best Couple Profile Photos of the New Year for All Mankind” came out: Chang’e 4 and Yutu 2 took photos of each other! The five-star red flag shines on the back of the moon!

It's even more shocking than a blockbuster movie! So far, my country's lunar exploration project has achieved "five victories in five battles, and consecutive victories". Netizens could not help but praise: "My country is so great! How can I describe it with just one word!"

Behind these photos transmitted back to Earth is a group of mysterious people who have almost never appeared in public. Many people have said, why would this group of mysterious people go to the back of the moon, which is said to be the alien territory, to cause trouble?

PepsiCo recently released this year's "Bring the Fun Home" series of micro-films "Star Pickers", focusing on this group of adventurers who conquer the sea of ​​stars. 👇

This year, Pepsi will still lead with a micro-film, continuing the two core keywords of "home" and "fun" , and opening with the question "Why did you choose to be an astronaut?" With the help of interspersed narrative shooting techniques, the audience follows the clues of the picture to find the "answer". In just two weeks, "Star Pickers" has received nearly 500 million views. Such remarkable achievements were certainly not achieved overnight.

Why can a brand IP that has been operating for 8 years create attention again and again during the New Year? Why can we come up with new ideas when “bringing the fun home” has become a collective New Year memory for young people? What is Pepsi's "trump card" behind this?

In order to answer these questions, Pinmei carefully studied PepsiCo’s “Bring the Fun Home” series of marketing activities and found many interesting things, which she would like to share with you here.

01 Stable brand tone control, long-term brand IP across years and platforms

Accurately positioning the target group, finding topics, shooting the advertisement like a blockbuster, inviting famous celebrities to be the face of the advertisement... We have seen many such good Spring Festival marketing works, and Pepsi's "Bring the Joy Home" series of advertisements is one of the best.

Before we knew it, this is the eighth year in a row that we have seen Pepsi’s “Bring the Joy Home” New Year advertisement.

I guess everyone still remembers the 2016 "Bring Home the Music: Family of Monkey King". Pepsi invited Liu Xiao Ling Tong to the camera and spent six minutes telling everyone a family story of "how the Monkey King was made". Combined with the familiar classic scenes and music from "Journey to the West", "Family of Monkey King" became the highlight that everyone forwarded and talked about at the dinner table in the New Year.

This year, Pepsi has turned its lens to outer space, and the content is also very interesting, turning the reunion on earth into an adrenaline-pumping and touching adventure - "I'm going on a long journey and picking a star for you."

Yes, Spring Festival marketing is always the highlight of brand owners every year, but few can make it into a long-term IP like Pepsi.

From Louis Koo, Angela Zhang, and Show Luo at the beginning, to Li Yifeng, Jolin Tsai... and to this year's Zhou Dongyu, Deng Chao, Liu Haoran, Yang Yang, and Zhai Tianlin, we seem to have become accustomed to seeing the scene of Pepsi gathering all the stars to wish everyone a happy new year every year.

The reason why it makes people feel so familiar and close is largely due to its "family-oriented" attributes. It always leads young people to find the direction and motivation to return home and walk out of the brand's preaching.

02 Identity recognition: the shortest path to the user’s heart

Taking advantage of the great event of space exploration for all mankind, PepsiCo cleverly continued the concept of "Star Reachers" and made it the common language of the times.

Whether you fly to the sky for your dream or keep your feet on the ground for your dream, in fact, everyone who works hard is a "star reacher".

Although "the destination is unknown, the success rate is unclear, and the danger still exists", on the road to realizing their dreams, the "star pickers" still resolutely embark on the star-picking journey.

Such "star-picking" scripts are actually played out every day in real life. Just look at how many times you have posted “Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing at 4 a.m.” on your Moments this year and you’ll know.

Under the new identity concept of "Star Picker", the user's own story is recognized. Once he sees content related to "Star Picker", he can directly participate in it without wasting resources on further explanation, and the resistance to dissemination is naturally reduced to a minimum.

03 Accurate crowd capture, effective extension of the “home” scene

Today, many brands are increasingly certain that "youth" is a major "political correctness" in brand marketing as they expand their territory. Therefore, we can see that many brands gain short-term attention by inviting young and handsome actors to shoot commercials and taking advantage of hot topics that young people like.

But in the long-term development of the brand, can these short-term traffic be transformed into brand memory? How can we truly have fun and resonate with young people who have more discerning tastes?

Following the memories of the "Home with Kids" era in 2017 and the time-travel and street dance elements in 2018, Pepsi has continued to understand the psychology of young consumers and added elements related to young people every year to meet the increasingly discerning appetites of young people.

In addition to the emotional power of the micro-film this year, PepsiCo has brought some freshness to "Bring the Joy Home", and has worked hard on the "personalization" and "sense of ritual" that young people value. With the help of Alibaba's big data, the camera is handed over to every star-chaser who strives for his dream, and exclusive micro-films are customized for each person, completing another effective extension of the "home" scene for young people.

Different from many other H5s, "Exclusive Impressions" relies on the technical support of the Alibaba platform. In just one minute, it presents a stunning performance of thousands of people with thousands of faces:

It covers 500 single and double surnames, and the content scenes spread across 34 provinces, cities, landscapes and humanities. There are also 30 different flavors of hometown customs and 31 local dialects, creating an immersive interactive experience for the "star pickers".

There are also 34 interest tag categories for nearly hundreds of millions of people on Taobao, which accurately prove the hobbies of "star pickers".

With the passionate performances of four celebrity voices, including Zhou Dongyu, Liu Haoran, Yang Yang and Zhang Yishan, as well as two thoughtful versions for boys and girls, 159,392 different exclusive short videos and 118,014 customized exclusive imprint labels were generated for the "Star Pickers".

It can be said that this level of exclusive customized online interaction has shown the potential to go viral by the time it reaches mid-season.

Undoubtedly, in this social age, people are no longer satisfied with passive "watching" and "listening", but hope to participate themselves. Only in this way can the real dissemination begin.

In this great New Year marketing show, Pepsi's "Bring the joy home" is more than just a way to take advantage of the trend.

From the celebrity momentum in 2012, to the initiation through celebrities in 2015, calling on more people to participate in the creation of content, which was then edited into "Bring the Joy Home - Crowd-Creation Microfilm"; to the national memory of the Monkey King Family in 2016, and the immersive "home" scene experience of the star pickers this year, "Bring the Joy Home" is a brand IP that constantly injects "fresh blood" .

With more segmented, customized and sophisticated content, as well as topics that young people are keen to interact and share, such as celebrities and hot topics, Pepsi is also constantly holding on to its users and gaining high topics and traffic.

Content related to "home" has strong spreadability in itself. Ask yourself, who hasn’t missed mom’s dumplings on a night when working overtime? Who doesn’t want to quickly throw away all the hard work and fatigue of the whole year and go home!

Source: Chief Brand Officer (WeChat ID: pinpaimima)