How Pepsi Lost Control Of Its Own Line, And Won
Pepsi's Hindi line in India stopped belonging to Pepsi. Yeh Dil Maange More was written to sell a soft drink to young people and ended up as a phrase ordinary Indians used about anything they wanted more of.
Brand: Pepsi, in the Indian market of the 1990s
The line was built for a youth positioning against an entrenched competitor
It passed into general speech and was used in contexts entirely unconnected to the brand
It was most famously echoed in reporting of the 1999 Kargil conflict
What Pepsi Was Trying To Do
Compete with a rival that owned the category by refusing to argue about the drink. The cola war in India was never winnable on taste, so the ground moved to who the drink was for, and Pepsi took the younger half.
A line in Hindi rather than English did more work there than the strategy documents of the period tend to credit. It placed the brand inside how the audience actually spoke rather than how advertising usually addressed them.
What Happened Next
The phrase escaped. It turned up in conversation, in headlines, and most famously in the reporting around Kargil in 1999, attached to a context no brand would choose and none could decline.
That moment is the one worth studying, because it is where a tagline stops being an asset a brand controls and becomes a piece of language the public has taken possession of.
Why That Is A Win And A Problem
A win because the brand recall that follows is enormous and free. A problem because the brand has no say in where its own words appear, and cannot withdraw them from a context it dislikes.
Most marketers say they want a line that enters the language. Very few have thought about what it means that entering the language is irreversible.
More on Ad Tribe Campaigns That Built India.