CASE STUDY: Pepsi Max-Promoting the 'No Sugar' Message via Radio

As public tastes increasingly change the 'no sugar' proposition of Pepsi Max became more important than ever. Despite the brand being highly recognisable and well established among consumers, research demonstrated more needed to be done to reinforce the "Don't Worry There's No Sugar" message.

Engage the target audience (16-24 year old men) through irreverent, fun content whilst reinforcing the no sugar message. The use of radio allowed the brand to further extend the activity with listeners by making podcasts of content produced by the stations available for download. The great 'talkability' factor of the content was allowed to proliferate with the listen-again nature of podcasts.

Radio was chosen as the preferred vehicle as it has a very good reach of 18-24 year old males (88%) and also boasts a number of stations that are tightly targeted on this group, such as Kiss, Galaxy, Vibe and Kerrang amongst others. Listeners used a microsite to nominate their mates for wind ups which took place live on-air breakfast shows. The best pranks saw the victim win a comedy night out with the friend who nominated them. The most excruciating wind ups were then edited into a series of 8 minute podcasts which listeners could download and listen to again.

The branded podcasts were downloaded over 20,000 times over the 4 weeks of the campaign, and at 8 minutes per podcast, this allowed the brand to engage in a very substantial way with listeners. Over the period, awareness of the 'No Sugar' proposition increased by 42% and Pepsi's key brand health measure rose from 22% to 25%, which is one of the largest increases Pepsi has ever seen.

That radio can be used as the core recruitment medium to speak to a very specific group of people. By understanding and harnessing the proposition of a station a brand can effectively tap into a target group of consumers. It also demonstrates how activity on the radio is increasingly being developed through simultaneous use of the internet (in this instance podcasts) to enhance the listener experience and further the brand conversation.