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Pepsi's World Cup Campaign Infiltrates Viral Chart

Coke Is the Official Sponsor, but Pepsi Scores First on Web

by Michael Learmonth
Published: March 11, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Coke may be the official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, but Pepsi's 2.5-minute "Oh Africa" is the first World Cup ad to make the viral chart, and portends well for Pepsi's revamped social-media strategy.

Pepsi took a pass on the Super Bowl for the first time in 23 years in 2010, and CEO Indra Nooyi has said the company is shifting as much as a third of its marketing budget to social media. But "social" doesn't necessarily mean "cheap." Pepsi's video effort is big-budget with visual effects and stars the biggest names in the game, including Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba. Will online video help Pepsi find a way to own the World Cup without actually being in the World Cup?

Pepsi's spot is one of three new debuts on the list, replacing the two remaining Olympics spots which were still hanging on last week. Two Super Bowl spots also remain -- Doritos and E-Trade -- but they're declining fast. Pedigree's "Slow Motion" debuted at No. 2 on the list, a first for both the marketer and for the category. Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" hung on to the top spot for a second week, though its audience dropped by 45%.

	Last Week	Brand	Campaign	Agency	Current Week Views*	% Change in Views**
1	1	Old Spice	The Man Your Man Could Smell Like	Wieden & Kennedy	1,189,165	-45%
2	New	Pedigree	Slow Motion	TBWA	1,065,056	New
3	3	Evian	Live Young	BETC Euro RSCG	1,041,271	-5%
4	New	Crazy Domains	Cream	The Brand Agency	1,037,208	New
5	2	Doritos	Crash the Super Bowl 2010	Goodby, Silverstein & Partners	742,287	-55%
6	4	Sussex Safer Roads Partnership	Embrace Life	Director: Daniel Cox	524,658	-17%
7	New	Pepsi	Oh Africa	N/A	512,243	New
8	7	E-Trade	E-Trade Super Bowl 2010	Grey	429,122	-20%
9	10	Microsoft	Xbox Project Natal	World Famous	412,085	-9%
10	Back on Chart	DC Shoes	Gymkhana Two	Mad Media	399,345	Back on Chart
Source: Visible Measures The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns, TV show or media network promotions, or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. *Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign's overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.