Pepsi congratulates Mumbai Indians, the only Coke IPL team

Pepsi bought the title rights of the IPL for five years for a whopping Rs 396 crore.

Once this decision was taken, there was more that they had to spend. In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes. So Pepsi had to invest in airtime on the official broadcaster and other channels, they had to invest in TVCs and other communication and had activation.

That was to ensure that Coke could not outshout them during the IPL on the official channel, on other channels with high viewership and on ground.

In addition, for abundant caution, Pepsi invested in sponsorship of IPL teams, so that the Coke logo had little opportunity to be seen. Pepsi managed to bag the rights to all the IPL teams - bar one.

That one is Mumbai Indians, the team which eventually became champions of IPL 6.

And this morning couldn’t have been a great day for the marketing team at Pepsi, as they open the newspapers and see this:

[caption id=“attachment_821313” align=“aligncenter” width=“380”] The Pepsi ad.[/caption]

“They were thirsty. And it showed,” says the copy.

If Mumbai Indians were thirsty, they would have got a few gallons of their official drink, Coca-Cola.

When Mumbai Indians won the IPL, Pepsi’s marketing team must have been in a bind on how to deal with the congratulatory ad (which must have been conceptualized and scheduled well in advance. Should they abort the ad?

They didn’t, and, as we see, Pepsi congratulated a Coke team.

That’s great sportsman spirit. Well done, Pepsi.