Pepsi's 'What's your way?' campaign to woo Youngistaan

The brand has launched an activity for 'My Can' to strengthen youth connect and engage with them in a fun manner

Here's another 'problem-solution' campaign, but with a twist. Pepsi has, in a bid to strengthen ties with the youth (in the brand's lingo, Youngistaan), launched an engagement campaign titled 'What's Your Way?' which will pose tricky questions before consumers and get them to pose solutions in their own quirky, youthful ways. The brand's rationale for the campaign is that today's young generation is smart, has its own unique ways of getting out of complicated situations and getting what it wants.

The brand will throw some relevant problems in the way of youngsters, via Pepsi My Cans, the Internet, print, mobile marketing, television, radio, on-ground activation, campus posters, and communication at youth hangouts. The youth will be asked to 'compete' for the cool quotient by calling/SMSing their responses about the ways in which they would get out of the particular situation.

The answers will be put to the test online on Youngistaan.com (one could even publish one's answers on Facebook, Orkut and Twitter profiles to gather votes) and the ones garnering maximum votes – the best answers – will be printed on Pepsi My cans (four such answers will be selected, with one answer per situation), along with the winner's picture.

Further, during the course of the activity, every day, one youngster will get a chance to become the 'Youngistaani of the Day', entitling him/her to a month's supply of free Pepsi and Rs 5,000 as SMS talk time. Participants could also win 'What's Your Way' ringtones and free talk time (Pepsi aims to give consumers about Rs 20 lakh worth of free talk time).

A 10 second TVC opens the floor for the campaign. It has been created by Soumitra Karnik, vice-president and executive creative director, JWT and directed by Prasoon Pandey of Corcoise Films.

Recently, as a prelude to this campaign, Pepsi had released the 'My Pepsi, My Way' ad campaign featuring five cricketers – MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Ishaant Sharma, Robin Uthappa and Praveen Kumar, which had a bunch of young fisher boys outwitting the celebrities at their own game. The commercial, which showed Youngistaan's wit, laid the ground for 'What's Your Way'.

Sandeep Singh Arora, executive vice-president, marketing, cola, PepsiCo India, remarks, "Pepsi has always been synonymous with youthfulness and a 'Can Do' attitude. 'What's Your Way' acknowledges the ability of the Indian youth to find a 'Jugaad' way out of any situation. With this dialogue, we hope to take the engagement with the youth a notch higher."

The aim for this activity is for 'Youngistaanis' to interact with the idea and even co-create their situations through applications such as the 'Whack-o-meter' on Facebook. With 'My Radio, My Way', Pepsi will create a mobile radio studio which will go to campuses, from where college students can play the music they like.

The campaign will target cities such as New Delhi (and NCR), Chandigarh, Patiala, Kota, Lucknow, Kanpur, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, Manipal, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune.