What do you do when you have strived hard at building an online community of 16 million fans on Facebook and another 61K followers on Twitter? You strive harder to keep them engaged and kicking like the way Pepsi India has been doing throughout the recently concluded IPL 6, in which the beverage brand held the sponsor title. With cool campaigns like the ‘Tweet20’ and ‘The Great Indian Catch’ weaved around social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter with a microsite at its core, Pepsi had managed to recreate the on field cricketing experience for its fans on social media.
For the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy, Pepsi has launched the ‘Road to Champions’ social media campaign using a combination of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, taking fan engagement to the next level. The game invited one to share their favourite moments in cricket and earn points. Points mean kilometres with which one could travel on a virtual map to reach closer to the Champions finals at London. The top scorer won the chance to fly off to London and toss the coin at the finals along with the champions of cricket!
Road to Champions
The game is hosted on a microsite ‘R2C.pepsiohyesabhi.com’ with a video at the top that explains what the game is all about. You have to then register by syncing your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and entering your personal details like name, email, phone number and email id. So you can connect through any of the three platforms to share your favourite pictures and videos from the cricketing moments. The ‘Road to Champions’ journey has been simulated on a virtual map.
Tweet on Twitter or share pictures on Instagram with the #RoadToChampions hashtag. Each of these shares earn you points or kms that take you forward on your journey to the finals at London. Each of the 7 days of travel ended with a pit stop, and if you have the maximum points at the pit stop, you could also win goodies and be the flag bearer.
The application displays the score or kms left for London at the bottom, along with a leaderboard listing the top scorers.
How cool is the Road to Champions?
Ever since going the ‘Oh Yes Abhi’ way at the beginning of this year, reflecting the impatience of the youth today, Pepsi has been actively promoting the idea of ‘now’ in each of its brand communications on all mediums. And the title sponsorship with the country’s biggest and most exciting cricket game only added to the message, targeted mostly to the youth. With online games like Tweet20 where you could tweet shots to the Great Indian Catch that made you feel like the fielder, Pepsi had upped the fan engagement this IPL6.
The Road to Champions certainly joins this list of cool campaigns by Pepsi. The beautifully designed microsite integrating the social networks, isn’t a surprise though, as Digivaasi seems to have perfected the art by now. In fact Tweet20 had also won an award for best use of social media. The addition of Instagram is worth noting though as sharing Instagram pictures through your smartphone is much easier and fun.
However, there have been many exciting campaigns to engage fans during the ICC Champions Trophy with great incentives too. Moneygram had launched a hunt for the Ultimate Cricket Fan who would then get a chance to report live at the games. Castrol Cricket also gave the chance to watch the games live at London through the ‘Cling on to cricket‘ challenge. Hyundai and ESPNCricinfo’s Cricjockey is a cool campaign in the hunt for cricket jockeys.
Comparatively, Pepsi’s Road to Champions does not test your cricket knowledge and is fun for all. What do you think about it?