Pepsi has been hitting with its new nostalgia ads. Will it make a home run?
Over the past years, Pepsi’s global direction has been to invest in getting celebrities; to affiliate its brand name with popular figures, especially in football. But is this direction engaging people in the new digital era? Does it make it easy for the brand to pick up on the community’s online content and build stories around this platform? Apparently not.
Flashback — Pepsi Ramadan Ad Campaign 2013
Last Ramadan, Pepsi surprised its audience with a new nostalgic direction. They brought back Bougy & Tamtam along with some of the Egyptian oldies like Foaad El Mohndees, Nelly, and Fatouta under the theme of “Yalla Nekamel Lametna.”
The ad was brilliant especially given that it was supported by a very emotional music score composed by Hassan Al Shafie. Everyone thought that Pepsi was getting back on track with a trove of nostalgic stories in the online world, which was perceived as the perfect opportunity for them.
Missed Out
Pepsi decided to use the oldies characters to build some basic stories without including their audience or giving them space to share their nostalgic moments online.
Though the ad picked up over 2 million views on YouTube (most of the viewership was definitely paid), the audience was still waiting for more. They were waiting for stories to engage with and a space to share their memories.
Pepsi Ramadan 2013
Nostalgia is a science
Nostalgia ultimately helps people feel better. If you do some research you will find that nostalgia is a science. You will also find that psychologists conducted a lot of research proving that most people experience nostalgia at least once a week, and often three or four times: either happy, sad, or lonely feelings.
Another study indicates that nostalgia is universal, experienced across all cultures, and actually increases self-esteem and ‘social connectedness,’ which relates to feelings of being loved and protected.
Actually, playing hit songs and memories from the past and giving people lyrics make them feel loved and that life is worth living.
Brands must consider that many people are turning to social media for increased connectedness to fight boredom and to generally feel happier. The question here is why wouldn’t you do the effort to build on this?
And Here Comes Pepsi Ad Ramadan 2014
Pepsi took a great step in building on last year’s campaign with a new nostalgic ad starring George Sedhom, Hesham Abbas, Hamed El Shaery, Nagwa Ibrahim, The Four-M, and Shereen among others.
The music is brilliant as expected. They produced another Duetto song by Hisham Abbas and Hameed El Shaery – infamous for their oldie song “Ayenee “ with their popular dance.
+500K YouTube ‘organic’ views in less than 24 hours
This tells us that the ad is really brilliant and extremely booming, we think that the viewership will hit 1 million by tonight without any paid views.
On Facebook & Twitter: Pepsi topped all topics, news, and conversations in Egypt on July 6th.
In less than 2 hours from publishing the video ad on YouTube, Egypt’s Facebook & Twitter timelines have been altered 180 degrees from those negative conversations about gas & goods prices up to “Pepsi’s new nostalgia ad”.
Ramadan campaign hashtag (#يلا_نكمل_لمتنا) and Pepsi keywords topped the trends in Egypt
Egypt’s trends 6th of July
Pepsi Nostalgia 2014 targets 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s
A stunning opportunity
Pepsi has a great opportunity to fix what happened last year. Don’t miss out on it. Your audience has lots of expectations.
Here are some basic ideas anyone could think of that you would really need to execute digitally:
You could inherently play on nostalgia by documenting a period of our lives and moments by the month and the year. Make it easy for us to look back through old conversations and photos via a separate platform/website linked to Pepsi social assets. You can start by highlighting the memories you already brought in your copy then give your audience the space to play a part. This can be done through the following steps:
Listen
You should listen to your community’s conversations through the provided platform even if it’s only a hashtag. t is preferable, as mentioned above, to have a visually appealing platform documenting different moments by categories.
Engage:
Start by picking up on those conversations and ask for more. Make it fun and easy for them to share these moments through a defined process.
Re-Generate:
You could easily regenerate these stories and re-post them on your social assets with a unique style.
Enable:
Finally, you should never miss the power of the audience’s stories. Filter those stories and feature the best of them may be in a new ad copy or a unique attractive platform. It’s time to include your community in your content creation.
Don’t miss out on it again and do a giant Fanous activation in a big Egyptian square. Yalla engage with your people and pick up on their online conversations.
Written by: Bassem El-Hady & Ahmed Maher
Edited by: Nadine Hafez
