Inmessionante
PepsiCo Argentina
Issue 28 | September 2013
Agency
BBDO Argentina
Creative Team
Executive creative directors: Ramiro Rodríguez Cohen, Rodrigo Grau Creative director: Luciano Bellelli Director of Interactive Experiences: Pablo Tajer Art directors: Gustavo Chiocconi, Josefina Casellas Innovation director: Alejandro Gowland Producer of Interactive Strategies: Verónica Conti Interactive art directors: Maximiliano Ballarini, Laura Sturzenegger Interactive copywriter: Agustín Suárez
Production Team
Head of Production: Verónica Zeta Producer: Rodrigo Lema Digital Partner: UO Solutions AV Production company: Poster / HookUp Animation Sound: Elefante Resonante
Other Credits
Account director: Daniel Albamonte Account executive: Candelaria Zavalía Account assistant: Antonella Donatti Digital account executive: Daniela Zarlenga Advertiser supervisors: Federico Bluthgen, Joaquín Anderson, Ignacio Dantas
Date
December 2012
Background
Pepsi had a global sponsorship with the Argentinian football superstar Lionel Messi. The problem was the agreement did not allow them to use Messi himself in their home market.
How could the brand let 18-25 year- olds know that their hero had a special relationship with Pepsi?
Idea
The thinking started with a simple observation: whenever the media tried to talk about Messi, again and again they were forced to admit, ‘There is no word to describe him’. Even the coach of the national football team, Alejandro Sabella, said ‘The Spanish Royal Academy should come up with a new adjective to describe him’.
So Pepsi set out to do just that, to find a word that would define the world’s greatest footballer.
Messi fans were invited to suggest new words through Pepsi’s Facebook page, via Twitter (#unadjetivoparamessi) and at www.unadjetivoparamessi.com. Coach Sabella was invited to pick the word he thought most appropriate and a well- known Spanish publisher agreed to include the new word in their Spanish dictionary.
The word he chose? Inmessionante. In Spanish it is a mash-up of ‘Messi’ and ‘amazing’.
Results
- 10,987 adjectives were proposed in one month.
- 56+ MM impressions in Twitter.
- 18+MM twitter accounts reached.
- The campaign surpassed the local objective and went global.
- ‘Inmessionante’ started to catch on and went mainstream.
- 28% of Tweets in Spanish regarding Messi included the word Inmessionante (during and after the game Barcelona- Milan. Source: Sensei Brand Tracking).
- Banners and signs with the word Inmessionante appeared in stadiums in Argentina and Spain.
- TV News and sports programmes from all around the world began to use the new adjective.
Our Thoughts
We’ve all been here before. The global brand team at the centre sign a deal with a big star but out in the provinces you can only use the assets they share with you. For Pepsi in Argentina it must have been galling to have their boy signed up to the company but unusable. Unless someone could come up with a cunning idea.
Which they did. Such a simple idea as well, to get everyone to help create a word for genius. It’s a word which only really works in Spanish too so it gently reinforces the thought that Messi may be a global phenomenon but he belongs to Argentina.