The soft drink major is signing up cine sensation Bipasha Basu and cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar to promote its mainstay brand Coca-Cola in the summer of 2002.
A 60-second action-packed TV ad will feature former Miss Universe Sen, with Khan, in a Thums Up commercial, scheduled to be aired within a couple of days. Shot in Thailand, the ad will promote the maturity and self-confidence message of Thums Up.
While the film has been shot by Australian director Guy Mansfield and cameraman Murray Skillman, the campaign is handled by Leo Burnett, advertising industry sources said.
Coca-Cola will soon launch a sensational campaign by featuring Gavaskar and Virendra Sehwag together. The campaign will put a legend and a new sensation face to face. The company had recently signed up Sehwag for the Coke brand and Sen for Thums Up.
Another mega-campaign will also be launched with Basu for Coke. And, this campaign will supplement the Life ho to aisi theme being carried out by mega-celebrity Aishwaria Rai.
With these celebrities, Coca-Cola will launch a mega counter reply to the Tendulkar-Amitabh campaign launched by rival Pepsi. For summer 2002, Pepsi Foods has brought these two big celebrities together to put its cola promotional campaigns on fire. It has also signed up rising cricket star Mohammed Kaif.
Coca-Cola will use these celebrities to promote its twin message Thanda matlab Coca-Cola and Life ho to aisi. Coke’s strategy is to be generic with the concept thanda and to be first in the category—any cold drink means Coke.
And, both the cola majors will keep on taking digs at each other, to keep alive the cola war, triggered by Pepsi’s Rahul Khanna-Fardeen Khan campaign which showed that Pepsi is selling like hot cakes while rival drink (Coke) has no takers. Pepsi has also hit at Coke’s Aamir Khan-thanda campaign with the same ad, by Business thanda matlab Cola-Cola.
Coke’s strategy is to hit out at Pepsi with Thums Up, Sprite and Limca, while keeping focus on promotional aspects like thanda and Life ho to aisi through its mainstay brand Coke. Coca-Cola’s Salman Khan-Thums Up campaign has hit out at Pepsi Food’s recently launched lemon-flavoured drink Pepsi-Aha.
