Pepsi highlights Wild Cherry, Vanilla flavors with TV, Giphy campaign

Dive Brief:

Pepsi kicked off a new cross-channel campaign to promote Pepsi Wild Cherry and Pepsi Vanilla for the first time in five years, the company shared with Marketing Dive.
The campaign focuses on new flavor Pepsi Vanilla Zero Sugar, as well as the return of Pepsi Wild Cherry Zero Sugar. The "Copier" spot promotes Wild Cherry and "Ribbon" promotes the new Vanilla flavor, and the ads feature LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It" and The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights," respectively.
As part of the effort, GIF-sharing platform Giphy created a library of shareable GIFs for the new flavors with lines like "byeee" and "chillin."

Dive Insight:

The latest campaign by Pepsi focuses on a new product line that takes the brand's new tagline "That's What I Like" to heart: The company separated the Cherry Vanilla product into two products after receiving consumer feedback that they weren't interested in a combined flavor offering, and has made the two flavors central to the new push.

Revealed in January, "That's What I Like" is the brand's first permanent U.S. tagline in two decades, following earlier platforms including "The Choice of the New Generation" and "The Joy of Cola." It was informed by "broad qualitative and quantitative research," according to Pepsi.

Music has been at the center of the "That's What I Like" platform, and each spot has featured songs from across hip-hop, Latin pop and more genres. That continues in the brand's latest push, with a song that has been featured across film, TV and advertising in "Sexy and I Know It," and a recent chart-topper in "Blinding Lights."

The Giphy partnership is aimed at getting the fans that asked for these flavors to share the news with friends, and to better integrate the brand into conversations among consumers. Giphy has become a popular partner for marketers including Chipotle, L'Oreal Paris and Wendy's as GIFs become an increasingly popular way for younger consumers to communicate. Previously, Pepsi has utilized AR to be a part of online communications, both with Instagram AR filters last summer and a recent global campaign that used QR codes on packaging to unlock soccer-focused AR experiences.