Pepsi: Swag Se Solo – The New Way of Living

Sanjay Prakash, Deep Singh, Niharika Ghoshal

Source: WARC Awards for Asian Strategy, Entrant, 2020
Downloaded from WARC

Pepsi needed to grow market share in India and enhance brand attributes to compete for a youth
audience, so it ran a social media campaign addressing single people with a positive message at
Valentine's Day.

As the third player by market share and ad spend, Pepsi needed to stand out.
It identified that the majority of its target audience was single, so subverted category conventions
of romantic messaging at Valentine's with a song that praised singledom.
The campaign was fronted by a single celebrity and ran on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok,
where the spokesperson and record label seeded the song, instead of having a branded launch.
The organic buzz and engagement drove a two point increase in top of mind awareness and
boosted brand attributes of youth and taste by 10 points each.

Campaign details
Brand: Pepsi
Brand owner: PepsiCo
Lead agency: Mindshare India
Contributing agency: Wunderman Thompson India
Market: India
Industries: Carbonated soft drinks
Media channels: Online video, Public relations, Radio & audio, Social media, Word of mouth, influencers
Budget: 5 - 10 million

Executive summary
Pepsi is a challenger in the carbonated soft drinks category in India. It faces stiff competition from other cola
brands such as Coke and Thums Up. This category is mostly consumed by youth, who are about half of India’s
1.3 billion population. As a brand, Pepsi’s challenge was to connect with this audience, in spite of a multitude of
brands vying for its attention.

To increase penetration, Pepsi needed to:

Unlock new markets

Tap potential audiences

In 2019, Pepsi launched its ‘Swag’ proposition which boosted volume growth and increased image scores. In
2020, Pepsi planned to extend this proposition to strengthen its position. It did so by launching a counter-culture
campaign.

Valentine’s Day was an occasion which resonated with the core audience. Most brands wooed couples so Pepsi
decided to be the voice of 99% of singles on this day. This led to fantastic results.

Became the Number 1 international cola in India on consumer equity

Increased brand attributes of ‘youth’ by 10 points and ‘taste’ by 10 points

Market background and cultural context

Pepsi had 19% market share in cola; Coke 21% and Thums Up 55%. It decided to gain market share by driving
penetration and unlocking newer markets in northern India. Uttar Pradesh is one of Pepsi’s largest markets,
contributing 21% volume growth versus overall growth of 9%.

The cola category is based on attitudinal differentiation. Pepsi spent $7.2m in 2019 to move attitudinal
momentum with Swag; Coke spent $12.1m and Thums Up $9.3m.

In 2019, Pepsi began the #HarGhoontMainSwagHai campaign, reaching consumers in semi-urban and rural
markets in Uttar Pradesh. The majority of young consumers there were single. This gave Pepsi an opportunity
to be the voice of single youth. ‘Swag Se Solo’ was created with Salman Khan, a single Bollywood celebrity, as
the face of the campaign.

Objectives
Pepsi wanted to make itself relevant to the consumer by achieving the following:

Business objective: Gain market share in the cola category.

Communication objective: Boost scores for Top of Mind (TOM) and brand attributes of ‘youth’ and ‘taste’.
(H’1: Jan-Jun, H’2: Jul-Dec: TOM-Top of Mind, SOM-Share of Market/Market Share)

To drive share of market the most important key performance indicator (KPI) was TOM. As the graph shows,
TOM and SOM are correlated. Therefore, TOM was a crucial KPI.

Insight and strategic thinking

A deeper dive into data around the key audience revealed:

Seven out of 10 consumers in its core market were single

Almost 99% (119 out of 120 million) of the audience had updated their relationship status to ‘Single’ on
Facebook
Singles were shy about expressing themselves on social media because of their ‘single hood’

This created an opportunity for Pepsi to offer a new point of view on a relevant occasion, and be the voice of the
singles who hesitated to express themselves. The brand chose Valentine’s Day as the occasion to announce
the ‘Swag Se Solo’ campaign. It was the perfect time for Pepsi to break the clutter and differentiate itself from
brands who were targeting couples and partners.

The ‘Swag Se Solo’ campaign was devised to empower single youth and change the mindset from ‘Oh God, I
am single’ to ‘I am Swag Se Solo’.

Cultural insights were key to creating partnerships to enhance the campaign. Since Indian youth are invested in
Bollywood, music, social media and movies Pepsi partnered with music label T-Series to launch the ‘Swag Se
Solo’ anthem on Valentine’s Day. The song featured single star Salman Khan in the music video. Partnerships
with social platforms TikTok, YouTube and Instagram amplified the campaign with the help of macro influencers.

Creative and/or channel execution

‘Swag Se Solo’ presented singles as the ultimate Swagsters, highlighting their swaggering way of life. The
campaign was divided into three stages.

Discovery

This stage generated buzz around the ‘counter-culture point of view’, before the release of the ‘Swag Se Solo’
song. The objective of this stage was to build anticipation.

Instagram posts focusing on the ‘counter-culture point of view’ on single hood were posted on Hug Day, the
second day of Valentine’s week
Macro influencers on Instagram reposted Pepsi’s point of view
Radio activation and digital PR generated buzz around the alternative view on Valentine’s Day

Action

This stage focused on the launch of ‘Swag Se Solo’ and amplification across youth platforms. The objective was
to build awareness and reach for the #SwagSeSolo campaign

The song was launched on YouTube via T-Series’s channel, so it appeared as a regular, not a branded,
song launch
The song was launched on Instagram via Khan’s account (33.8m followers)
 Pepsi’s Instagram page reposted Salman’s post of the song’s launch
#SwagSeSolo #SwagStepChallenge was launched on TikTok with a branded Swag lens and iconic ‘Swag
Se Solo’ step

Sustenance

This stage was designed to develop a life beyond Valentine’s Day.

Salman Khan performed ‘Swag Se Solo’ on the leading reality show TV ‘Bigg Boss’ (a version of ‘Big
Brother’, which he hosts)
YouTube covers of ‘Swag Se Solo’ were performed by groups like MJ5 (2.15m subscribers) and Melvin
Louis (3.85m subscribers); they were reposted and shared by Pepsi on Instagram
 The #SwagSeSolo YouTube anthem received 126m views
Set a global record on TikTok with 75,000 user videos created in 24 hours
Garnered 65bn views on a branded hashtag challenge on TikTok

During the campaign, the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The sudden lockdown created a seismic shift in the way
brands connected with consumers. Pepsi had to offer a relevant point of view without losing its trendsetting
appeal. Staying silent in a country with the world’s largest youth population was not an option. It was imperative
to find a meaningful point of view that was truly Pepsi.

The solution

The social distancing messaging in the media was too grave. There was an opportunity to make it more fun in a
Pepsi way by infusing it with Swag. The key was to leverage 'Salaam Namaste', an existing ritual of social
distancing in India.

Pepsi created a mash-up, repurposing 'Swag Se Solo' with a social distancing message. A Pepsi ‘Swag Se Solo’
branded lens on TikTok led to over 75,000 user videos, breaking Pepsi’s own record. More than 300,000 videos
were created in three days with celebrities from film, theatre, music and sport joining the conversation.

Performance against objectives

Business objective: Pepsi became the Number 1 international cola by consumer equity

Communication Objectives:

Top of mind awareness increased by 2 points

Brand attributes of ‘youth’ grew 10 points and ‘taste’ grew 10 points

Media Objectives achieved

Garnered 125m views on YouTube and 65bn views on TikTok

Broke the TikTok record twice with more than 75,000 user videos posted in a day
Conversations around branded videos surpassed 2m in six days; Salman Khan’s videos were shared more
than 120,000 times

Lessons learned
Believe in what the brand stands, for even if it is counter to culture: Pepsi adopted a counter-culture point
of view on Valentine’s Day, when brands typically woo the audience with messages about lovers and partners.
Pepsi stood up for singles, allowing their voices to be heard in a cool, meaningful way.

Stay true to the core proposition: The campaign connected to Pepsi’s core brand proposition of ‘Swag’,
extending it beyond existing attributes to drive penetration and unlock new markets.

Be relevant and adaptable: When Covid-19 hit, Pepsi found a brand-authentic way to spread awareness
about social distancing by giving a new spin to the ritual of ‘Salaam Namaste’.

Client’s view
"This campaign was instrumental in helping Pepsi to execute and amplify the brand message on leading youth
platforms like TikTok and Instagram.”

–Tarun Bhagat, Director of Marketing, Hydration and Cola

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