The hashtag challenge urges viewers to maintain social distancing by switching up their greetings; and shooting a video with the filter on TikTok.
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As people in India and globally, are gearing up to embrace the new normal, traditional greetings like Salaam/Namaste have never been more relevant. In an endeavour to popularise contactless Indian greetings, Pepsi, along with brand ambassador and actor Salman Khan, has introduced a new digital led campaign. The video campaign aims at inspiring the world that greeting each other with Salaam/Namaste to maintain social distancing norms.
The video is an extension of Pepsi's youth centric campaign – ‘Swag Se Solo’ and is based on three relevant insights. The cultural insight which recognises salaam and namaste as an inherent part of the nation’s culture; the social insight which recognizes the importance of social distancing in the new world (post coronavirus); and the consumer insight which recognises the people’s need to express themselves in a fun and engaging manner. It's an attempt to bring about a behavioural change through adherence to social distancing norms through a simple act of doing salaam/namaste in an entertaining way.
View Pepsi's 'Swag Se Solo' campaign below.
A PepsiCo India spokesperson said, “Existing habits and beliefs have never been challenged as much as they are being today. Social distancing will take centerstage as people step out of their homes once again. Pepsi® as a responsible brand, aims to champion the cause of contactless greetings by encouraging people to use our old age traditional ways of greetings with Salaam/Namaste.”
The challenge is advertised for on the top banner of TikTok India's Dsicover page and is the first trending hashtag that users see when they get on to the app. As of 5:00 p.m. on Friday, 29 May, the hashtag had been 67.6 billion times. Bollywood celebrities like Jacqueline Fernandez and choreographer Remo D'Souza have also taken part in the challenge. The campaign is a hashtag challenge with a branded lens. Using the hashtag gives users access to a signature track and a banner that takes up the top half of users screens. Influencers like Aawez Darbar, Afsha Shah Khan, and Jyotsna Haldkar also took part in this challenge.
Increasingly, more Indian brands are using Tiktok as a medium for visibility. Since lockdown began, major advertisers such as Ariel, Dettol, Lifebuoy and so on have been using the medium with hashtag challenges to gain visbility. Ariel was among the first to get on to the TikTok bandwagon with a rendition of their 'Share the Load' campaign.
As the coronavirus continued to spread, handwashing and personal hygiene became the need of the hour. That is when Dettol and Lifebuoy also used the medium to create 'handwashing challenges' that showed users the proper method and duration of hand washing to kill germs. Irrespective of the category of brands advertising on the platform, they all appear to follow the pattern of using a mix of celebrities and influencers to encourage people to take up the challenge and increase overall campaign visibility.
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