How PepsiCo practices multicultural marketing

PepsiCo, a global food and beverage company, is tapping into a personalized marketing strategy to reach Hispanic consumers in the US.

Why it matters

Hispanics are the fastest growing cohort in the US and have a strong sense of cultural identity. Understanding their cultural heritage and language communication, along with tailoring ads instead of adapting a one-size-fits-all strategy, can help brands create campaigns that resonate with this audience.

Takeaways

• Through a partnership with Aki Technologies, Pepsi used first-party data when launching personalized campaigns for Gatorade, a sports drink in its product portfolio.
• The beverage brand reached the Hispanic audience in this campaign through several variables, including US location, language and time of day.
• Pepsi employed a similar strategy when releasing Brisk Blood Orange, an iced tea subsidiary, as it created three Hispanic consumer segments in its first personalization variable focused on personas: New buyers, loyal buyers and lapsed buyers.
• Language, the second personalization variable in the iced tea campaign, was also divided into three segments: English, Spanish and Spanglish.

The big idea

“How you engage with Hispanics is critical. You need to understand when to leverage language, when to be endemic, when to be in culture and how to be as authentic as you possibly can,” Esperanza Teasdale, vice president and general manager of the Hispanic Business Unit for PepsiCo, said at Adweek’s 2023 Commerceweek conference in New York.