National Pride Endorsed By Pepsi

The 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China will take place this Thursday. Naturally, this is an important event to most Chinese people, including the Chinese youth. To my suprise, however, was the level of this importance.

Colleagues have placed the celebrations on par with that of the Olympics, a time when no brand wanted to miss out on China’s coming out party. Yet, how does a brand use a sense of national pride to market to Chinese youth when it is no longer masked behind ‘friendly competition’ or ‘sport’ and is instead pure and unabashed national fervour? The answer it seems for many foreign brands is, you don’t….unless you’re Pepsi.

Pepsi have setup a website, hosted on tencent’s Qzone, which lets users leave a twitter type message dedicating their birthday wishes to the motherland. The site also aggregates the locations of all the entries (6.8m entries from Guangdong) and shows the most popular phrases (‘prosperous’, ‘come on!’ & ‘strong’) used within the messages.

The accompanying TVC has only helped to burgeon the success of the campaign. The advert has carried through Pepsi’s ongoing campaign to align itself with China’s burgeoning, if a little confused, [pop]rock scene.

The advert has been well received (“I really like it, the last part is even a little moving…”) and within just over a month of being online, the website has had over 33.35m recorded entries. Contestants are slightly incentivised by the chance to appear in a Pepsi ad or win tshirts but the sheer magnitude of entries leads one to assume that this campaign was more pride driven, than prize driven.

Aside from Pepsi, Mcdonald’s has had some small localised events for the anniversary, but no other overseas brand has dared/tried to cash in on the patriotic sentiment built around the celebrations. In this way, Pepsi have not only capitalised on this lack of competition amongst foreign brands, they have pushed forth to make themselves indistinguishable from Chinese brands.

Research from 2008 has shown that from a sample group of Chinese consumers from tier 1, 2 and 3 cities that 41% thought Pepsi was a Chinese brand. Aligning Pepsi with an event of such importance to Chinese youth, as shown through their web traffic, means that even if they aren’t fooled into thinking Pepsi is a Chinese brand, people may be willing to adopt it.

We are always looking for new ways to form deeper bonds with our consumers, which is why we are providing this platform for netizens to engage in the country’s anniversary. Harry Hui, chief marketing officer for Pepsi Greater China.

Pepsi have shown a real commitment to marketing to youth in China, one which is slowly starting to see results over it’s competitors. The success of this shows Harry is true to his word, in taking the oppurtunity, when no one else would, to form a deeper connection with the consumer.  Foreign brands may fear courting the dreaded ‘angry youth‘ and worry that marketing of this sort cuts too close to a politic stance, but it’s through this sort of risk that Pepsi will gain legitimacy that no amount of celebrity endorsement could ever do.