afaqs! news bureau
Digital

Yehi hai old ad baby, Aha!

Pepsi's new 'Pepsi Thi, Pi Gaya' ad is a remixed version of an old 'Yehi Hai Right Choice Baby - Aha!' TVC from the 1990s.

A year before last, Pepsi came up with the 'Pepsi Thi, Pi Gaya' ad - an extension of the 'Oh Yes Abhi!' or 'live for the present as tomorrow is too late' philosophy. With that, the brand was trying to own the instinctive space.

Taking the same thought forward, Pepsi recently released another ad, 'Pepsi Thi, (Kaun) Pi Gaya?'. It has fetched over 5 million views within a week of going live on YouTube.

Yehi hai old ad baby, Aha!
Beginning with two black guys engaged in a tug of war over the last bottle of Pepsi, the film has quite an international look. In fact, if not for the Indian guy who casually grabs the Pepsi not realising that is the 'object of war' here, it is difficult to tell if this one's for the India market.
Yehi hai old ad baby, Aha!
Recall that the last 'Pepsi thi, pi gaya' ad found itself in the eye of the storm after being accused of taking a tasteless dig at the then ongoing FTII agitation. At that time, chief creative officer, JWT India, told afaqs! that the resemblance was not at all intentional, and people were relating the ad to the FTII strike because it was on the top of their minds.

Curiously enough, after a brief hiatus, the TVC went on air once again during the JNU student row around March last year.

The current ad, which has gained a large amount of traction online, is interesting effort, visually, because it's not till the Indian guy walks in that one realises it's an Indian spot. Today, ads are consumed across screens and platforms, often without volume; this Pepsi ad, which looks 'international' - (a 'global' ad?) - can easily be consumed and understood on a digital medium, with or without volume.

Yehi hai old ad baby, Aha!
More importantly, this ad looks like a modern rendition (ostensibly made for the digital audience) of a classic 90's ad which featured Indian cricketers Sachin Tendulkar, Vinod Kambli and Mohammad Azharuddin. In that ad, it was Azhar who walked away with the Pepsi as Tendulkar and Kambli fought over it.

Talking about the resemblance, Mark McDonald, head of creative at DigitasLBi, India, says, "Why would Pepsi redo a well-known 20 year old ad that featured a young Tendulkar and Kambli? To appeal to a new set of viewers who were perhaps too young to remember the first edition? For anyone who's seen the original though, this one lacks novelty. You know where this one is going the moment you see a single Pepsi bottle in the fridge. So it does lack originality."

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