Manmeet Sabharwal's Marketing Blog

Argentina recently saw a new change in their lives, A new soft drink Pecsi or not so new softdrink Pecsi.Actually Pepsi has come up with a new campaign in Argentina in which Pepsi has been renamed Pecsi.

When speaking Spanish, especially with an Argentine accent, people tend to say “Pecsi” instead of “Pepsi”. They have said it like this for years, and Pepsi has responded by launching a campaign changing the second P to a C, believed to be the first such change for the venerable brand.

According to a recent survey, 25% of the population says it that way. So BBDO Argentina (ad agency) came up with the idea of simply making “Pecsi” the spelling and launched an integrated campaign to support it.

The motive was clear, get closer to consumers, by including those who weren’t pronouncing the name of the brand correctly but also by focusing on saving and standing by consumers’ sides in a time of crisis. In Argentina, drinking a Pepsi costs one peso less than drinking a Coke. The message: If you drink Pepsi, you save. If you drink Pecsi, you save as well.

The bottle

The commercial

The Coca Cola had also done something similar in China.The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, “ko-kou-ko-le,” which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth.”

Ko-Kou-Ko-Le

Coca Cola has to do it to suit the local flavour and especially the name to make some sense(or no nonsense) but what about Pepsi’s (or Pecsi’s) campaign ?

On one website i read an interesting quote ,”Whats next Pepsi ? A “bebsi” for Arab countries?”

or may be Papsi(with Accent) for India.

One more strong argument against this is that 75% of the crowd has no issue in pronouncing Pepsi as Pepsi( and not Pecsi).So is this campaign just for the 25% ? Or it is an emotional branding for the rest of other 75 % too ?

What ever the reason apart from Consumer Connect Pepsi(or Pecsi’s) campaign seems to generate a lot of interest world over and surely it will help the sales team.

Argentinians also pronounce Pizza as Picsa so whats next Picsa Hut haan !

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