How Pepsi used origami to win market share

Context

Pepsi were cut off from a key cola consumption moment - fast food dining. Long-time rival Coca-Cola had lots of tactical partnerships, and so very few people were able to choose Pepsi with a burger.

Pepsi commissioned a third-party blind taste test to understand consumer preferences between Pepsi Coke when eating burgers from the top 3 fast food chains in the US. They found that people preferred Pepsi.

Now they needed a way to communicate this.

Objectives

• Steal 1 share point (or more) from the competition
• Get people to choose Pepsi over Coke in key consumption moments - focusing on fast food chains
• Increase consideration for Pepsi in key consumption moments by 20%

Strategy

Pepsi knew that people drank Coke with a burger more than Pepsi. But it wasn’t because of preference - it was because of availability. They also knew Cola lovers do not settle for ‘good enough’ in key consumption moments.

But to get people to go out of their way to grab a Pepsi instead of an on-hand Coke would require them to build a strong association between the consumption moment (eating fast food) and drinking Pepsi.

So, they hired an origami artist to use burger wrappers to reveal Pepsi’s logo, and communicate a single, simple message: burgers are in fact 'Better with Pepsi'.

Outcome

The large OOH and tactical press campaign drove awareness nationwide. It generated 3.6bn impressions, a 29% increase in brand consideration, and a 1.1-point share of market steal from Coke.