In order to find new ways to connect with a discerning Empire audience expecting a lot from Pepsi’s involvement, we completely dismantled, rebuilt and reimagined our Empire partnership. The only parts remaining intact were our relationship with Jamal’s character and the continued goal to blur the lines of fiction and reality for fans.

Working with FOX and the Executive Producers we created an extended storyline that integrated real-world Musicians from Pepsi’s emerging artist platform, The Sound Drop, within the fictional world of Empire. Jamal was undergoing a personal transformation in-Show, and our Pepsi Artists acted as muses while he created the “When Cookie Met Lucious” Visual Album. From working with the original Lemonade Producers to artfully integrating key visuals to represent the songs, we created an Empire story bigger than the Show – connecting the pieces all the way to Retail for fans to experience live.

PRE LAUNCH: Leveraging social listening tool, CANVS, we gathered a deep understanding what the fans most loved, where they engaged, how they identified with key Artists, and how to amplify the fans’ Empire experience on behalf of Pepsi to guide storyline development.

LAUNCH: Our custom social series, ‘Emerge,’ launched with the Empire Season 3B premiere. Airing weekly alongside Empire episodes and living on Facebook, ‘Emerge’ connected the real world of Pepsi and the Brand’s emerging artist platform, The Sound Drop, to the fictional world of Empire by featuring musical talent such as Tinashe and Jidenna.

FINALE: The partnership culminated with Pepsi’s exclusive release of Jamal Lyon’s Visual Album, “When Cookie Met Lucious (W.C.M.L.)” in-show and across @Pepsi’ on Facebook during the Empire season finale. The artwork featured on the Pepsi Mini Cans was integrated into the Visual Album, with Pepsi Sound Drop Artist, Tinashe, elevated within as Jamal’s muse.

We defied odds to build a completely differentiated Empire partnership that exceeded benchmarks and resulted in an original Visual Album fans watched on Pepsi Social channels during the Empire Finale on-air.

• Drove Sales Lifts, as well as increased key Affinity measures among Empire Fans

- Delivered 7% lift Pepsi Sales, vs. 4% YAG

- Drove +15% lift in Brand Memorability + Top of Mind Awareness and +14% in Brand Consideration

• Illustrated Pepsi as a treat that brings consumers joy through music

- 24% of viewers attributed strong Pepsi Brand-association with music culture

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• Inspired engagement with the partnership resulting in Brand love

- Delivered 2x+ planned views (128mm+) across paid

- Visual Album generated 28x more reactions vs. @Pepsi Facebook norms

- Empire + Pepsi content surpassed Pepsi Facebook view rate benchmarks 91% (+ 23%)

- 2x increase in engagements on @Empire ‘Emerge’ series vs. YTD benchmarks

In partnership with FOX, we as Pepsi took a big risk and challenged ourselves to completely reinvent, and more importantly, surpass the Empire integration model that made waves in 2015. We threw our partnership playbook out the door, leveraging data, insights, and real-life Pepsi Musical Talent to break new creative story arcs for Empire fans who cannot get enough of the characters and the music they create. It all culminated with a surprise, Pepsi-led finale featuring the exclusive premiere of Jamal Lyon’s Visual Album which seamlessly connected the narrative from start to finish.

The Pepsi consumer is united by the simple truth that they unapologetically pursue their passions to the deepest level, sharing these moments with their family and friends. It was critical that we create opportunities for our consumers to go even deeper within the world of Empire – revealing new, original musical experiences that fans could immerse themselves within - down to their fingertips on Social.

Broadcast is more fragmented than ever, while still a top-rated Show, Empire ratings continued to decline. However, on Social, Empire fans, followers, conversation, and engagements continued to rise.

Consumers will share their attention – even with a Brand – when something is authentic and unlocks what they are passionate about. But we couldn’t just create another in-show Empire integration for Pepsi. No. We had to push the envelope, taking the Show beyond Broadcast into the world of Social platforms to ultimately unfold in real life.

As consumers' consumption habits continue to shift towards perceived other beverage choices, PepsiCo made the conscious decision to divert media investment from Carbonated Soft Drinks to their repertoire of Hydration brands. And while PepsiCo reduced spending behind Pepsi Trademark, our competitors took the opposite approach and increased their media spend.

Our challenge was clear: we had to be disruptive if we wanted to combat being in a declining category with half the media budget versus our competition. And what better way to do that than take one of our most successful media partnerships in recent years: Fox’s Empire, and completely blow it up?

Given the high bar set in year one and some newly critical sales goals for Pepsi Trademark, our year two partnership had to demonstrate that we could not just meet our year one Sales benchmarks, but more importantly, well surpass them.