Pepsi Thi Pi Gaya

From the time Pepsi was introduced in India, as far as I can remember, their TV commercials have always featured celebrities. The very first TVC had singer Remo Fernandes and the ads which were released in the later years featured film and sports personalities. After seeing Pepsi advertising dominated by celebrities for years this new ad campaign comes as a refreshing change – there are no celebrities here but what we see are ordinary people; the ad features young men and women who happen to be Pepsi’s core target audience. The ad shows college students protesting and threatening to go on an indefinite hunger strike until their demands are met; one of the agitating students notices a bottle of Pepsi which he finds irresistible, he grabs the Pepsi bottle and drinks, thus causing great disappointment to his fellow agitating students, the Pepsi drinker reacts by coolly saying ‘Pepsi thi yaar, pi gaya’ and looks around with ‘I-drank-Pepsi-so-what-is-the-fuss-all-about?’ expression.

Looking Back

Let me introduce Shilpi Bose my co-blogger. Shilpi had contributed to this blog earlier; in this post she shares her experiences, hence the title ‘Looking Back’.

Aroop Bose

...

Let The Magic Begin!

Remo Fernandes & Penny Vaz

When I started out as a journalist nearly two decades ago, the economy was just opening up and the advertising industry was growing. Simple advertising was giving way to big budget innovative advertising and for me it was interesting to be part of this significant period in Indian advertising.

When I look back what immediately comes to my mind is the ‘dhamakedar’ launch of Pepsi in India. I have no choice but to use the Hindi word ‘dhamakedar’ to describe the launch for I cannot think of an equivalent word in English; there was lot of fanfare with a teaser commercial et al.