Motive’s Canadian presence is growing as it has been given full lead creative duties for PepsiCo’s flagship beverage brands in Canada, as well as more integrated advertising and marketing work for a handful of snack brands.
In Canada, Motive has been named AOR for the Pepsi, Pepsi Zero Sugar, Diet Pepsi and Bubly brands, leading integrated advertising and marketing campaigns. It is also taking on new creative work with some PepsiCo Food brands, namely Miss Vickie’s, Ruffles and Frito-Lay Single Serve.
These new assignments do not impact the portfolio at BBDO Canada, which works on several PepsiCo Food brands, including Doritos, Lays and Quaker.
Motive’s new assignment is the result of “a very collaborative working relationship leading to best-in-class creative,” according to Brian Flaman, who has been promoted to managing director for Motive to help handle growth in Canada in response to the “sizeable” assignment. The agency launched in Canada in Dec, 2018 to handle experiential work for PepsiCo, building off a 15-year relationship in the U.S.
“The original opportunity in Canada was experiential, but it’s grown to be more than that, especially due to the pandemic,” he explains, as experiential activation have been severely limited. “We’ve been given an opportunity to expand our work with the master brand and to lead the integrated advertising and marketing across both beverage and some food businesses.”
The expansion outside of experiential began earlier this year, when Motive led creative on two successful campaigns for Bubly and Pepsi Zero Sugar, both of which launched during the Canadian broadcast of the Super Bowl.
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The campaign for Bubly saw frequent brand pitchman Michael Buble delivering the brand’s newly-launched flavours to Canadian households in what was dubbed the “Buble Delivere.” The Pepsi Zero Sugar campaign, meanwhile, depicted an ice cube longing to be in a glass of the beverage.
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Moving forward under its new mandate, Motive is launching a pair of summer campaigns – one for beverage and one for foods – both based around promoting the products through prizing.
But the work in market is just the beginning of the new relationship between Motive and PepsiCo, Flaman says.
“I know we have a lot left to explore with Pepsi, and with experiential back on the horizon again, we’re excited to marry our creative leadership on these brands with the power of experiential to create fully integrated programs,” he says.