As a brand, how do you stay at the forefront of pop culture when in today’s world the definition of pop culture is constantly and rapidly evolving? That question was put to Adam Harter, Pepsi-Cola North America’s VP of cultural connections on Wednesday at PromaxBDA: The Conference 2016 in a session that focused on driving marketing innovation.
Unlike its competitor Coke, which has tended to exploit nostalgia in its marketing, Pepsi, since the days it partnered with Michael Jackson on that iconic campaign, has long been identified as a brand that’s in the “now,” said Harter. And Pepsi is constantly innovating to keep with the moment, Harter added.
The company took brand integration to the next level a few months ago when it partnered with Fox’s Empire on a tie-in project that had a main character (Jamal Lyon) landing a gig singing a song in a Pepsi commercial on the show and then aired that Pepsi commercial, starring Jamal the character, during the commercial break. The spot garnered major attention from news outlets and on social media and “blurred the lines between show and ad,” Harter said.
Harter attributed the success of the piece to the “true partnership” between Pepsi and Fox.
“When we approached the Empire opportunity we were looking to change the paradigm,” Harter said. A true creative partnership was key to achieving this. “We needed to make sure we were both authentic to the brand and authentic to what the creators of Empire had created,” Harter said. “These guys are master storytellers and they were willing to embrace us and our brand and help us find a way for our brand to play a really meaningful role.”
With the success of the Empire partnership, Harter and his team field lots of inquiries from other shows and brands looking to replicate the success. So how does Pepsi choose who to partner with?
“For us, we want to sit down at the table and we want to co-create. We don’t want to sponsor, we want a true partnership,” Harter said, noting that Pepsi is now in the content-creation business itself, having just built out and opened a fully capable content studio. “We’re looking for more and more opportunities to partner with the creators and the producers, we’re looking to create our own content and we’re looking to expand our network across the creative universe.”
Storytelling has never been more important from a brand marketing perspective – dollars follow big ideas,” Harter added. And good storytelling is all about considering context. “One of my favorite quotes, from Gary Vaynerchuk, is: ‘if content is king, then context is God.’ Contextually relevant message has been a big win for us,” Harter told the audience.
The new context for marketers is that consumers and viewers are now more accepting of brands like Pepsi as entertainment brands in and of themselves, Harter said. And Pepsi has definitively positioned itself as a leader in this new age of branded storytelling.
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