As 1st anniversary event of Pepsi-Suntory tai-up, Pepsi has launched "Pepsiman Bottle Cap Campaign" since the end of February, 1999. Suntory is one of the biggest beverage company in Japan and cooperation with them brought Pepsi the great advance in domestic softdrink market last year.

The pivot of this campaign is "PEPSI MAN", shiny metallic superhero(?) saving people not with supernatural powers but with Pepsi cola. Because of his character, ****** rather than cool or tough, he's now quite popular in Japan. There's no doubt he has played important role at PEPSI's marketing strategy in Japan.

First Campaign stared in March was called "PEPSI MAN Bottle Cap Giveaway". Bottle cap is a plastic attachment for 500ml PET bottle with little PEPSI MAN figure on the top. It came with every 500ml Pepsi and 12 different kinds were available this time. Especially, Pepsi-Letter series (see photo bellow) is the most popular ones because of it's humorous styles.

Pepsi launched second campaign in May. This time lot is printed inside the bottle and if you win you can get "PEPSI MAN Sound Big Bottle Cap" for free. This amazing bottle cap is quite well-made and just BIG! (It may be the biggest 500ml bottle cap ever made in man's history). More surprisingly, battery and speaker are equipped inside. Pushing the button on the back, you can hear "PEPSI MAN's theme song"!! Since this product is absolutely not for sale and the number of product is small, it is quite difficult to get this fascinating bottle cap even in Japan.

As soon as STAR WARS EPISODE I screened in U.S., PEPSI switched it's campaign to one with STAR WARS. Pepsi's advance doesn't seem to cease for a while.

References

• PEPSI Japan began STAR WARS campagin (Topics!)
• Free Pepsiman bottle-cap with 500ml PET bottle in Japan (Topics!, Japanese)
• PEPSI Official Website (Japanese)
• SUNTRY Official Website