“But we want to do it in a way that is authentic to consumers, but also that’s authentic to our brand and intersections with the PR support that we’ve gotten around it. I think that’s the other thing. The comms and PR piece attached to any of these evacuations is critical. Traditional media values are important from a brand building and awareness standpoint, but if you look at the earned media that we’ve gotten from these last few programs, over a billion impressions, millions [of dollars] in earned value. And that’s something you need to think about—what’s the role of comms in terms of your social strategy?”
Kirkham cited other examples of how the brand aims to meet various other intersections within culture through its music collaborations, which recently included a digital concert with U.K. grime artist Stormzy and others from around Europe to promote Rockstar Energy.
That centered around a partnership with Spotify through its Stages platform. While the artist himself does not use social media channels, his fan base is still heavily behind him, leading to 200,000 people watching the resulting concert, with a total of 34 million engaging with the content and increasing business within the markets where the brand activated, he said.
The day of ‘I’ll stick you in an ad’ or ‘I’ll stick you on our packaging’—that just doesn’t work anymore.
Mark Kirkham, senior VP and CMO, International Beverages for PepsiCo
Rockstar Energy was able to drive relevance to music by leveraging Spotify’s platform and using promotions and varying levels of subscription access to form part of the relationship with consumers.
“We took a new platform, and we were engaging consumers in new ways, and that’s a good example of how you can still leverage celebrity and music and all the passion points that are relevant to the brand. But if you’re not doing it in new channels and new ways that actually still have a business impact, then you’re missing the opportunity,” he said.
Another initiative for Pepsi pays homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop as well as the legacy of Notorious B.I.G., which included the creation of graffiti murals across London featuring a likeness of the late artist who was murdered in March 1997.
