In line with its global strategy, PepsiCo India is betting big on music to engage with millenials, with the launch of the Pepsi anthem as part of its flagship summer campaign “ Har Ghoont Mein Swag ”.

Tarun Bhagat, Director-Marketing, Hydration and Cola, PepsiCo India said, “The campaign celebrates the self-belief of Indian youth and we have been leveraging on various associations like the India-Australia series and reality TV shows such as Rising Star and The Voice to build on the “Swag” proposition. But we also wanted to do something that’s proprietary to scale up the campaign, which led to the creation of the Pepsi anthem.”

Garnering more views

The snack and beverage major worked on the Pepsi anthem for nearly six months.

“We realised that when a movie trailer breaks, it gets probably about 30-35 million views but when a peppy movie song releases, it organically achieves 100 million views. So tapping into that trend, we decided to release the Pepsi anthem as a music video,” he said, adding that music being among the “top two passion points of youth”, PepsiCo has been engaging with the youth through music as a strategy globally.

Distribution partners

The music video, which was released on April 7 by the company in collaboration with T-series, has so far garnered more than 67 million views on YouTube. The song has been written by rapper Badshah. The music video has been directed by Ahmed Khan and features Tiger Shroff, Disha Patani and Badshah.

“Enthused by the content of the music video, T-series decided to come onboard as the distribution partner and put it on their official YouTube channel,” added Bhagat.

Besides YouTube, T-series has made the song available on Gaana, Jio Saavn, Amazon Prime Music, Apple Music, ITunes and Spotify among others.

The song has also gained significant traction across other platforms including Instagram and TikTok.

“You cannot achieve organic reach and traction by just forcing the brand in a song. So our focus was to collaborate with partners to create great content and scale. Moving forward, we will be charting out a strategy for collaborations for brand Pepsi,” he said.

The company is following a 360 degree strategy to support the campaign. While Pepsi cans and bottles display the swag symbol, dealer boards and neon impact signages are also being deployed featuring the swag symbol.

It is also leveraging on the “away from home” channel for the campaign, which includes partners such as Domino’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway and PVR.