Pepsi brings Chinese family members together in heartwarming Lunar New Year Festival campaign

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In 2014, for the Lunar New Year festival, Pepsi released an in-app technology that allowed WeChat users (mainly younger users such as students) to send audio greetings to their family and friends in the form of a remixed customised version of the “Pepsi Delivering Happiness” theme song. Users could then share their soundtrack with friends and families.

• This campaign focused on bringing people who had to leave their families and friends behind due to study or work overseas, back together with their loved ones.
• WeChat has a heavy focus on audio messages as many Chinese people prefer that to texting because typing in characters is time-consuming.
• As a result, users could record an audio message on the Pepsi ad that would get mixed in with a soundtrack of the well-known “Bring Happiness Home” theme song.
• The audio message could also be altered to include in effects like the sound of a train. Another sound offer was a horse’s gallop, to conincide with the Year of the Horse.

The campaign was an overall success giving Pepsi a massive increase in social awareness during the festive season, with viewership for the integrated campaign was over 870 million across all videos, websites and applications (WeChat, Tmall, CCTV, Pepsi China official website).