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Rivalry with Coke has taken a back seat as the FMCG company focuses on the next big thing in digital marketing. By Nicole Clark
For marketers the world over, no battle of the brands can quite match the rivalry between Pepsi and Coca-Cola. It might come as a surprise, therefore, that Bonin Bough, global director of digital and social media at PepsiCo, does not have Coke's market share branded onto his brain. 'Our focus is less about us versus them and more about how we create platforms to engage with consumers on a long-term basis,' he says.
In line with this strategy, while CocaCola has most recently been looking back to bask in the glory of 125 years of the brand, a landmark it celebrated with a traditionaJ marketing campaign, PepsiCo has its eyes trained on the future. More specifically, it is attempting to decipher just what that future will bring to consumers in the fastmoving digital sphere.
This month, it has launched the PepsiCo 10 programme across Europe, an initiative first rolled out in the US 1 2 months ago. The initiative aims to find 10 of the most promising start-up entrepreneurs and businesses - from service technology social media and community-based marketing, mobile marketing, location-based technology, digital video and gaming or learning sectors. Selected companies will get the opportunity to work with PepsiCo in the UK, to deliver pilots of their technology to the group's brands, in a strategy designed to place PepsiCo at the forefront of digital innovation.
Partnering change
Last year's chosen few in the US included TableTop Media, a company that provides digital screens in restaurants, which, among other things, enable consumers to simply swipe out with their credit cards when they are ready to leave. Another tie-up was with Evil Genius Designs, a company that creates interactive games that are shown on huge screens in venues where consumers are waiting in queues.
It is a bold move for PepsiCo UK to roll out the project on a similar scale in the UK market, where its portfolio of brands, led by its flagship Pepsi range, Walkers Crisps, Tropicana and Quaker Oats, is smaller.
The energetic Bough describes the project as part of his broader drive to ensure that PepsiCo...