Leveraging the latest round of the Champions League (and 100 days to the start of the World Cup), official UEFA partner Pepsi launched a multi-platform ‘Love It. Live It. Football’ campaign that aims to connect art with sport to bring the beautiful game to life both on and off the pitch.
The 360-degree creative – which spans TV, imagery, digital an social channels and localised artwork – aims to offer a ‘highly sharable’ and ‘joy-evoking’ perspective on the sport as it brings football and several start players to the street.
The work, which runs under Pepsi Max in some markets, is fronted by a five-strong team from Pepsi’s stable of soccer star ambassadors:
> Five-time Player of the Year and four-time UEFA Champions League winner Leo Messi
> Brazilian defender and back-to-back UEFA Champions League winner Marcelo
> Triple UEFA Champions League winner and German midfielder maestro Toni Kroos
> US playmaker and two-time Women’s Best Player of the Year Carli Lloyd
> English rising star and twice Young Player of the Year Dele Alli
The campaign is spearheaded by an action-packed, high-energy global television commercial centered upon a five player kick-about with paint-filled footballs.
The ad sees the soccer stars showing off their skills and agility as they race through a bustling crowd to dodge paintballs: walls, windows and people get splattered from head to toe in paint (all set to a ‘Light It Up (Remix)’ soundtrack by Major Lazer.
March also saw Pepsi renew its partnership with COPA90 and the partnership embarked on a series of interviews to show footballers in 4D.
This hero #LoveItLiveIt spot is supported by the brand’s ongoing March digital/social football ambassador interview video series which includes videos starring Dele Ali,
Toni Kroos,
Marcelo,
and Messi.
The video work is supported by a series of ‘bold, black & white portraits’ of each player captured by photographer Danny Clinch.
These photographs aim to capture the spirit, character and energy of each Pepsi teammate.
Thus acting as the canvas for extremely personal artistic overlays created by visual artists from the athletes’ home countries – Diego Jimenez (aka DIYE) (Argentina), Bicicleta Sem Freio (Brazil), Dennis Schuster (aka DXTR) (Germany), Kim Sielbeck (US) and Iain Macarthur(UK) – designed their own graphic interpretations of each player’s story.
Through the year Pepsi plans to release additional disruptive football content and experiences that aim to ‘enable fans to truly love and live the game’.
These will include personal conversations with the players, COPA90 content, plus UEFA Champions League Final access and entertainment.
The content pieces all aim to drive and encourage fans to ‘loin the conversation’ online with Pepsi and #LOVEITLIVEIT.
“Pepsi is known for bringing football’s most iconic heroes and hopefuls to the world in unexpected, entertaining ways, showing fans the never-seen-before sides of the players they love,” said Natalia Filippociants, Senior Marketing Director, Global Pepsi Trademark, Global Beverage Group, PepsiCo.
“What tightly links the football experience across our iconic brand, the players and our collective fans around the world is a love for the game. This year, we’ll love and live the game like never before in all we do.”
Comment:
This approach of linking ‘sport’ and ‘art’ is Pepsi’s tactical response to the genre blending trend that increasingly see the lines blur between sport, culture, music and other aspects of entertainment.
Think Nike ‘Nothing Beats A Londoner’! (see case study).
Indeed, in both its partnership marketing and its general advertising, Pepsi’s self-declared positioning aims to solidify the brand as an icon of ‘pop culture.
According to the Pepsi press release accompanying this new campaign launch: “#LOVEITLIVEIT aims to continue Pepsi’s brand heritage of ‘bringing joy to each generation’ and, in the sponsorship space, ‘connecting fans with the entertainment that has made the brand an icon in pop culture”.
As illustrated by its flagship Super Bowl 2018 commercial: which mixes sport, music, fashion, movies across the generations.
But, to the Activative team, in the effort to both blur sport and culture and create a truly global unified football campaign, this new creative feels a little too watered down and a little too shallow to truly get to grips with authentic football and fan culture.
Plus, we’ve seen the paint idea many times before.
Sony Bravia executed it more beautifully,
while in the sports space we’ve seen the approach used by everyone from Majestic in its MLB partnerships (see case study), to Epson’s Mercedes F1 sponsorship work (see case study) and the Holi festival inspired riot of colour commercial that opened the Pepsi IPL 2013 season.
Links:
Pepsi / Pepsi Max
https://www.youtube.com/user/Pepsi
https://www.facebook.com/pepsi/
https://www.youtube.com/user/pepsimax
https://www.facebook.com/PepsiMax
UEFA
http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/
https://www.facebook.com/uefacom
https://plus.google.com/+UEFAcom
https://www.youtube.com/user/UEFA
https://www.instagram.com/uefacom/
