This cola season has already got TV sets in a frenzy, and the fun has only just begun. | |
| Are you dizzy yet? Not from the heat, silly. From the starburst on your TV screen. Ash. Kareena. Priyanka. Shahrukh. And if you're looking skywards, there's an antenna on a roof in a Pepsi TV commercial "" even if the thunder seems to have struck elsewhere. It has struck a Thums Up bottle on a lighthouse (don't ask what it's doing up there... more later). |
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| It is dizzying, and the cola advertising season has barely begun. El Nino or La Nina (it's the latter, this year, an inversion of the former), efforts to grab you by your parched throat will intensify as the summer sizzles into the forties. That means more cola commercials. |
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| "Historically," says Santosh Desai, president, McCann-Erickson India, "it's been happening, and creates a buzz in the category; and with summer being peak-season for companies, the number of ads are bound to be more." |
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| Cola companies agree with that outlook, and for reasons that anyone would term reasonable. "Almost 50 per cent of annual revenues come during these three months," justfies an official spokesperson of Coca-Cola India. |
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| Throw in the adrenalising effect of the FIFA World Cup, for which Coca-Cola has much action planned, and you could have a record-scorching summer. |
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| And Pepsi? Discloses Vipul Prakash, executive vice-president, marketing, Pepsi India: "This summer is a bit different for us, as we are planning a lot more off-the-ground promotions as well." |
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| While several campaigns are bubbling their way up to the surface, the already-on-air "Pepsi TV" campaign is likely to continue till the end of June. It's still in teaser phase, but you won't have to go to the edge of your seat or wait too long to discover the brand's "TV" proposition: with Pepsi in hand, TV is double the excitement. |
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| A-ha, so there you have it: "Pepsi TV". Perhaps it's in response to this brave new idea that Thums Up has decided to seek its own intercession of unseen forces from above... lightning, in this case, rather than satellite broadcast signals. |
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| Cola-flavoured lightning too "" to quench Akshay Kumar's thirst, who braves fences and deserts to get to the top of a hill (to a lighthouse) for this uniquely thunderous fulfilment. |
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| And to think mountaineering is meant to be a Mountain Dew privilege, a Pepsi brand. Is PepsiCo doing something to counter this high-altitude (or high-attitude) incursion? |
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| The company won't reveal precise plans. But, yes, the thirst-quenching game won't just be an all-cola affair. There are other fizzies too, raring for action. |
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| According to Prateek Pota, executive vice-president, marketing, flavours, Pepsi India, "We will have a lot of off-ground promotional activities in relation to Mountain Dew and Mirinda." |
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| Mountain Dew is on a campus tour, while Mirinda's "Use your mouth" campaign gives the whole business of marketing fizzies another sort of twist. |
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| In the opposing camp, meanwhile, the spoofy Sprite watches for an opportunity to turn on the wit (as for its recent spoof of the Pepsi commercial, as the Mountain Dew dudes would say, it's a "naaah" "" wit without sparkle is fizzless). |
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