Pepsi’s My Can website receives 2.8 million votes

When Pepsi launched its My Can campaign in August (with a television commercial featuring Hindi film actors John Abraham and Shah Rukh Khan being slighted by a young boy), the message was clear: The youth of today believe in creating their own style rather than imitating a celebrity. To hold true to that message, Pepsi extended the My Can campaign by launching an online contest in October 2007.

Sandeep Singh Arora, executive vice-president, marketing, cola, PepsiCo India, explains, “The new youth are very expressive of their individuality and style. They are not emulative in their approach. They are creators of their own unique style and they proudly wear it on their shoulders. With My Can, Pepsi redefined its engagement levels with today’s youth, by providing a whole new consumption experience.”

The Pepsi Zone site has been designed by interactive agency BC Web Wise, and the creative agency is JWT. Preeta Mathur, copy supervisor at JWT, says, “Pepsi My Can symbolises the free spirit, individuality and self-expression of youth today.

Youngsters today want to do everything differently. They have their own style of doing things. They have their own point of view and they shape their own life.”

Zubin Driver, network creative director of The Cell, says that this is the first time the studio has shot original videos for a website. “A website is a small medium where there is more personal interaction. Compared to the big screen for which we normally create films, a web video has to speak directly to a person,” says Driver. One of the ways in which The Cell personalised the videos, shot in three shifts, was by putting computer generated graphics behind each one – based on what the people had to say.

Elaborating on the thought behind the videos, Mathur says, “As the My Can unleashes individuality in all of us and urges us to be different and cool, the idea of the videos was to give the youngsters a platform to be themselves. They had to shoot videos on their lives, their dreams, their aspirations (taking cues from the words on the My Can packaging) and, thus, become directors, actors and script writers all at once. It was a witty new way to see how cool they really were.”

Once the videos were up on the site, people could log on and vote for their favourites, so that the chosen 10 could win their place on the Pepsi My Can.

According to Arora, the Pepsi My Can site received 3.7 million page views and 2.8 million votes within just 10 days of the videos going live in December 2007. The number of unique visitors on the site was 313,000.

The voting for the videos has been closed and the Pepsi My Can special edition is expected to be launched in the market in April.