Pepsi is an international soft drink brand, which is that every youngster relates to, but this definitely doesn’t mean that other age groups are not its consumers. Pepsin’s brand image is hip-hop, cool and lively so as to keep a refreshing attitude. Pepsin’s target audience are mostly teenagers and young adults, and its advertising reflects this in every possible way. Its advertising strategy was aimed to reflect the target’s interests and grab the audience’s eyeballs to go for reaction.
However, the advertising and promotion strategy of a brand need to come in a variety of ways in order to cater to teens’ fast-changing taste. Advertisement Advertisement is a form of efficacious away of communication used to involve the audience and deliver messages effectively. For the sake of attracting the audience, suiting the desire of target audience and encouraging consumers’ purchases in a creative way are the prerequisites of a successful advertisement.
Lack of focus in Hong Kong marketing Besides, Pepsi places less emphasis in their promotion in Hong Kong market. Although Pepsin’s advertisements in China has been very successful for the increase f brand image and China market has become one of the major markets in the Asia for Pepsi. When it comes to coke, people might think about Pepsi. However, customers in Hong Kong may not react in this way. (Kodak, 2012) Lack use of social media With the lack of various kinds of promotion media, Pepsi is hard to fully penetrate into Hong Kong market.
Most Pepsin’s advertisements in Hong Kong only include some TV commercial and a few number of printed advertisements, like the printed advertisement in the MET Station which crossover with Ape, (PR Daily, 2013) Different Edie can be used, such as, advertisements in magazine, smartened and Movie with a few minutes. (Puzzle, 2013). Increasing the variety of the media of promotion could access different types of customers and thus boosts the sales of the products by attracting more customers to purchase their products.
What’s more, Pepsin’s company has insufficient ideas and various themes in their promotions that can catch the audiences’ attention. Pepsi often uses the same ideas in the advertisements that only show many celebrities with a short and meaningless story. Therefore, Pepsi has enormous reliance on the number of celebrity but not the intent of their publications. Suggestion of improvement Pepsi should try to get into the lifestyle of Hangovers since the only way to get the individuals’ attention is to create advertisements which appeal to them. People are probably more willing to listen or watch the appealing advertisements.
Take the home’ which talks about Chinese New Year is a tradition that runs through all our veins; the saying goes, Whether near or far, home is still home. Whether big or small, happiness is still happiness. ‘ it contains a large collaborative feeling to the audience and transmit the happiness to everyone. Therefore, it is fundamental to develop a message or concept, which show the characteristics of the brand and the products. (umbrella, 2014). With proper content and theme, their publication might be able to catch the eyes of the audience.
Using various media in the advertisements is also able to attract different groups of consumers. Launching some interactive event or having some advertisement in innovative way may help promote their products by raising their awareness. By launching street events, the company can draw passersby focus as the advertisements are tangible right in front of the audiences. Apart from their focus, the events are interactive with the passersby. Unlike the traditional one-way advertising method, street event could be an interesting and interactive way to promote the products. Microsoft Japan is an excellent example in the interactive event.
In 2007, in order to promote the Blue Dragon video game, Microsoft Japan has held an event which projected enormous shadow creatures on the wall of a building in a busy area and individuals by were invited to create their own shadows and interact with them. At the same time, the company made it Seibel for people to access and control projected shadows from their computers at home. This campaign has been very successful to raise the public awareness and was awarded gold lion in Cannes and a gold medal in the interactive campaign category of the Tokyo Interactive Ad Awards (Dustin Burg, 2007).
This indicates innovative advertising methods is mostly appreciated by the public and get the audience’s attention more easily. Pepsi should imitate and learn from the innovative idea from Microsoft but not advertising in an ordinary way in order to outperform its competitors. Though projecting a large shadow of can on the wall of IFS may not be practical, coke-drinking campaign may be one of the feasible ways to promote their products.
CO-PROMOTION
Co-promotion is a new way which benefits both involving parties. This strategy provides the largest benefits in a short period of time, as combining the forte of two different companies can result in an unexpected new product. Successful crossover event Take a look at the example on crossover promotion Pepsi and Ape. During the crossover promotion of Pepsi and Ape in 2011, they had redesigned Pepsin’s package ND logo on its containers, they had introduced some new crossover products, such as smart phone charger, notebook, bag, cup, ‘pad.
Those new type of products are not in the production line in both firm, this could explore a whole new market for both involving parties instead of their own soft drink and clothing market. They held a series of event for promotion such as lottery, exhibition. The use of various social networking sites such as Faceable, Google + and twitter is a new way of advertising. In this way, it uses other company’s recognition to bring out its band and thus wider the market share. In this case, people who may not buy Pepsin’s products but they are would have a contact with Pepsi .
To set up a successful co-promotion with other brands, it is important to choose a suitable brand that can really help increase the sales of both products. Pepsi should cooperate with brands that have loyal consumer base in Hong Kong, as Pepsi coke is not selling very well here, holding co-promotion events with other trendy brands can build an updated image for Pepsi coke, and attract more consumers to purchase the coke since Hong Kong people like to show others that they are trendy and up-to-date. Moreover, to look further is one of the essential elements for the company to increase the sales.
According to the survey conducted previously, only 21. 05% of interviewees think that the co-promotion of Pepsi coke is creative. We suggest Pepsi coke to design some new and useful product in crossover events because the passion of people in one thing comes and leaves soon, to catch their eyes; the company should create new ideas together with other brands continuously. Also the most important element is too spread the news of the co-promotional event through different media. Public relations Public relations is the practice of a company communicate with the public and medias.
It helps maintain a positive image of a company in order to impress the public and enhance the customer loyalty. Developing a good public relations event can definitely establish a stable relationship with customers. The key of successful public relations should require a deep understanding of the interests and concern of the public and make good use of media platform. Deep understanding of the customer’s interest Understanding the customers’ interest can attract them to take part in the activity ND build a relationship with them for no doubt.
Pepsi has created a game for winning the “Iron Man 3” AD movie tickets and the Iron Man figure in 2013. People will get a chance to win those prices by purchasing the Pepsi coke. Since Iron Man is a famous movie all over the world. It aimed to attract the public to buy Pepsi coke, using the great mass fervor of Iron Man. Pepsi has provided a chance to get free movie tickets base on the trend of iron Mann which actually fulfilled the desire of the public on certain extend. Suggestion “Even the most brilliant campaigns and clever PR materials don’t get results if they ever leave your in-basket or hard drive. (Public relations for dummies, Eric Weaverbird Bent,2006, P. 145)
Thus, the diversification of media is very important to generate the message to the audience. Therefore, it is suggested that Pepsi should announce their event though different social media which the teenagers familiar with, for example Faceable, Youth, Twitter. All of them are low in cost, still, it can gain a lot of attention. Conclusion promotion to enhance the awareness in Hong Kong. After analyzing the survey and information from Internet and books, we find that Pepsin’s promotions are unable to fit he market in Hong Kong.
There are three main problems need improvement, which are lack of focusing in Hong Kong market, lack of using variety media and mediocre ideas. The first problem can be tackle by concerning more sources in the promotion of Hong Kong. Moreover, holding more interactive events or using web advertisements, that can attract audience from different age group. However, Pepsi can improve by creating new ideas meet the desire of target audience. We believe that by dealing with these three problems, Pepsi could strengthen the competitiveness in the market and do much better in the future!
