Pepsi really needs to boost its online initiatives. There has been lot of offline activity leaning on their tagline “Yeh hai Youngistaan Meri Jaan”. They have even tied-up with MTV India for a show that promulgates their tagline. But they haven’t been successful in creating effective online initiatives.

I just came across the latest banner campaign from Pepsi doing the rounds. The banner campaign is an adaptation of their TVC ‘First Ball Ka Captain’ which is a contest designed for the IPL season. The winner gets to bowl the first few balls at the ICC T20 World Cup match in England.

The banner redirects you to a microsite where the contest is explained in detail. Yet again Pepsi uses the microsite as an extension of its TVC. They could have done much better by adding varied interactive elements.

The microsite is hosted on PepsiYoungistaan.in which has other online initiatives.  Pepsi has been campaigning the ‘Jaanta Hai Mera Baap Kaun Hai’ tagline on PepsiYoungistaan.in. The TVC’s are about individuals using their social network (which is colloquially referred to as “connections”) to get varied jobs done. To propagate the proposition Pepsi has a microsite that urges users to upload videos sharing their experiences with people who have used their so-called “connections” to wriggle out of sticky situations.

It looks like Pepsi failed building the same as there are only 4-5 user videos. In fact many brands are urging users to upload videos through varied online campaigns. But it looks like Indian users prefer their social networks, tweets and IM’s to voice their opinions or share their thoughts.

In fact Pepsi could have done so many activities pertaining to the tagline ‘Yeh hai Youngistaan Meri Jaan’.