Cola brands rearm with music

• Author: Simon Dyson
• Position: Editor, Music & Copyright
• Pages: 31-32

p. 31WIPO | MAGAZINE

COLA BRANDS

rearm with music

By Simon Dyson,

Editor, Music & Copy right

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have lon g been ghting a cola war, and although enter tain-

ment has formed par t of both brands’ marketing campaigns for dec ades, music is

increasingly beco ming an essential weapon. From live co ncerts to TV program s,

social media, digita l, lm and m usic discovery, Coke and Pepsi are deploying artists

across the globe to engage the worl d’s young people.

In Latin America, Coc a-Cola says it plans to change the way it engages with you nger

people by bringing enter tainment to the fore in its marketing. One of the rst events

in this new initiative was a free outdoor c oncert with Paul McCartney in Mexic o City’s

central plaza, the Zoca lo, in May, before an estimated crowd of 200,000 people.

The company also pulled in more consumers via its Coca-Cola.TV online platform

by live-streaming the three-hou r event. The concert attracted ha lf a million unique

viewers who spent an average of 42 minu tes watching Paul McCartney perform. The

campaign aimed to harn ess the power of “social TV” – facilitati ng conversations around

television shows – in encourag ing young people to contribute to the conversation

around the concert using Facebook and Twitter.

Coca-Cola also mixed music and TV for the London Olympic Games with its spon-

sorship of a 10-episode TV s eries, Beat TV, which aired via a numbe r of broadcast

partnerships. The program featured live musical performances alongside celebrity

and athlete interviews, targeting tee ns in more than 30 countries. The brand says its

aim was to capture the “vibe” of London – to convey the social a spects of the games

rather than the sportin g achievements.

PEPSI TEAMS U P WITH BILLBOARD

Not to be outdone on the social side, in early June, Pepsi joined forces with music

magazine Billboard to announce a Summer Beats concert ser ies offering fans “Twitter-

enabled” per formances across multiple genres. T he gigs began with a June 26 show

in Los Angeles, followed by a Nashvi lle concert at the end of July and a seaso n nale

in New York in late August, featuring exciting new artists such as K aty Perry, Gloriana

and Ne-Yo at venues catering to crowds of up to 1,000 pe ople. Fans were able to

watch the concerts via live -streaming on the Pepsi Twitter page, with Pepsi promising

digital participa nts the abil ity to inuence elements of the pe rformances in real ti me.

The concerts form p art of the brand’s global “Live for Now” marketing ca mpaign

which Twitter signed up to in May when it beca me Pepsi’s global music partner. In

addition to coming onboard for the Su mmer Beats concerts, the mi croblog is now

the brand’s destination of choice for helping p eople discover new music, with the

partners produci ng a new music-video series th at provides a weekly overvi ew of

artists, music and musi c news trending on Twitter.

Pepsi is also offering free m usic downloads from the Amazon.com MP3 Store to

those who follow @pepsi on Twitter and who slot the ha shtag #PepsiMusicNOW into

their tweets. Also par t of the Live for Now campaign, in June, Pepsi signed an agree-

ment with Viacom to extend the ca mpaign over a number of the US media g iant’s

→

This articl e rst appeared in Is sue 461

(June 27, 2012) of Music and Copyright published

by Informa Telecoms & M edia –

www.musicandcopyright.com.

Photo: iStockphoto / @ Iaroslav Danylchenko