Christmas. That moment of the year, when we set aside our differences and wish the best to the people, we care the most for. And this year, PepsiMAX received a really especial Christmas greeting; Coca-Cola placed a huge exterior greeting Christmas to everyone including its competitor, whose name appeared written as an acrostic hidden within its message. A huge opportunity for Pepsi to give a smart answer to Coke and be part of the conversation on social media.

A challenger brand always answers back, so PepsiMAX took the baton, ready to give the best possible answer. We faced a double challenge: ensuring that its answer won’t go unnoticed in the busiest advertising season of the year and doing it in a record time to take advantage of the momentum.

There were two things to take in account regarding Pepsi’s response. The most important one was the tone and content of the response itself. The message of Coca-Cola reflected its brand personality, remarking the things that reunite us, not those that tear us apart. And, with generosity they included the name of Pepsi.

Such a goody-goody tone shouted for a smart reply. And Pepsi did it: remaining truthful to its challenger personality, admitted in its message that nothing tastes better than receiving a Christmas greeting from your competitor… Wait, nothing? Yes, a Pepsi MAX! A Smart move taking in account that 54% of consumers preferred Pepsi MAX taste than other cola sodas.

If the message was important, delivering it in the shortest time possible was fundamental, too! We needed to move quickly to jump onto the hype started by Coke with its Christmas message. A successful execution was essential.

On December 16th, Coca-Cola placed its ad in the main building of one of the busiest streets in the financial area of Madrid. Its privileged placement makes it a very demanded space.

Of course, all the surrounding OOH spaces were booked since months ago, especially in the central dates of Christmas season. As soon as we received the news, we started the process to get a space as privileged as Coke’s one for our client. Using all our power of negotiation, we managed to get the huge ad space in the building placed face to face with the building where Coke’s ad was. On December 23rd, a giant Pepsi MAX ad was answering to its competitor.

And now we just needed to make people gossip about it! We amplified the posts published by Pepsi MAX in its owned media with a paid social campaign. Word of mouth made the rest.

The action was seen and spread all over the internet. We reached 7 million of users with our social media amplification campaign: almost 10 million of impacts between Instagram feed and Stories, and 2MM in Twitter. Getting to engage Pepsi’s audiences who wanted to position themselves as lovers of the brand, with 100k interactions between Instagram and Twitter. And proving that more and more each time, being able to capture the spirit of the moment is what makes a brand a part of the culture.