Pepsi launched a fundraising initiative to provide meals to restaurant workers affected by the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Objective and Context:
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown took a bad hit on many service industries in India. Among the worst affected were restaurants that had to shut operations to slow the speed of the virus. A lot of workers also lost jobs and were in dire need of support and security to stabilize their lives. The restaurant sector is the largest employers of human capital in India after agriculture. At a pivotal time, beverage brand Pepsi came out with a meaningful initiative to help restaurants adjust to the new normal.
The #PepsiSaveOurRestaurants (PSOR) initiative was a fund-raising campaign in association with the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) and leading online food delivery aggregator Swiggy to support and assist restaurant workers during the pandemic.
Target Audience:
Given the nature of the campaign, the target was Pan India and across all age groups.
Creative Strategy:
The #PepsiSaveOurRestaurants initiative encouraged consumers to support restaurant workers with a simple step. Whenever a consumer added any soft drink to his or her meal order on Swiggy from June 25, 2020 through July 19, 2020, Pepsi contributed a part of the proceeds for every soft drink ordered to the NRAI COVID-19 Relief Corpus. This fund was further used to provide meals (dry ration) to restaurant workers in need during the pandemic.
What made the campaign unique is that the offer was not restricted to just the purchase of Pepsi but was also valid on any packaged soft drinks ordered from restaurants listed on the Swiggy platform, including carbonated soft drinks, packaged iced tea, packaged juices, and packaged juice-based drinks.
Overall Campaign Execution:
A one-minute film was created to highlight the current plight of the workers, encouraging people to make purchases on Swiggy to help Pepsi make donations. The same asset was shown across various markets on the largest video platform, YouTube, via True View. Simultaneously, influencers also joined the movement, from Bollywood celebrities like Tiger Shroff and Disha Patni to celebrity chefs like Vikas Khanna. Food community celebrities from all over India encouraged their followers to help restaurant workers get meals.
Mobile Execution:
People who order food online are primarily mobile phone users. Hence the strategy was to use mobile as a medium to execute the campaign. All of the campaign execution was done through mobile, including film promotion on YouTube and the use of social media influencers.
Pepsi was able to provide 2.5 million meals to restaurant workers. The digital campaign managed to achieve a reach of more than 100 million viewers. As a result of this initiative, 700 additional restaurants added Pepsi on their menus. There was universal positive sentiment about the brand, as Pepsi became Swiggy's top soft drink with 48.3 percent market share.
