The Pepsi Taste Challenge has returned. This summer, for the first time in four years, Pepsi taste patrols will be on the prowl in major cities across the country, luring teens and young adults to take part in blind taste tests.
The original Taste Challenge promotion, which was retired in 1995 after a six-year run, proved a tremendous success, says Leslie Carter, director of marketing, flagship brands with Mississauga, Ont.-based Pepsi-Cola Canada.
The new version, Taste Tour ’99, plays up the brand’s associations with music and entertainment, by tying the taste challenge to a Pepsi-sponsored 30-gig concert series in Ontario and the Western provinces.
Music is a prime area of interest among teens and young adults, who are the highest per capita consumers of colas, Carter explains.
Taste Tour ’99 will run from May through to Labour Day in the participating cities: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Toronto, London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Ottawa.
Pepsi Taste Challenger Teams in these cities will be hitting key summer events. Young people who participate in the taste tests will receive a scratch-and-win contest card that offers a chance to win various prizes, including concert tickets. Radio stations will also be giving out passes to invitation-only concerts in the 10 cities.
The acts headlining the Taste Tour include Big Sugar, The Tea Party and Matthew Good Band, along with up-and-comers Vibrolux, LimbLifter and Estheros.
Marty Goldberg, managing director of GeneratorIdeaWorks, the Toronto-based agency responsible for developing the Taste Tour, says that the Pepsi brand has a long history of association with music, but has never promoted it in quite this fashion before.
One of the advantages of a promotion like this, he says, is that it takes consumers beyond simply interacting physically with the product, and gets them interacting with the idea and image that Pepsi stands for.
‘Pepsi is well-recognized among people who are potential listeners of The Tea Party,’ Goldberg says. ‘And The Tea Party is a hip, cool band [that attracts] potential and existing drinkers of Pepsi. So there’s a great image borrow there.’
The bands featured in the concert series, he adds, will also benefit from the added exposure.
The Taste Tour promotion has substantial media support, with advertising in urban weeklies and on radio, as well as an Internet component.
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– Till death do us part: Where clients used to come together for a quick-hit tactical promo, these days they’re into building long-term relationships p.B8
– Teletoon promo the cat’s meow p.B10
