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Pepsi Brings Emoji Customisation to Ukrainian Summer Screens
Pepsimoji is a digital campaign created by Havas Digital Kyiv for Pepsi, published in Ukraine in June 2018, in which viewers Shazamed a Pepsi television commercial to reach a mobile promotional site where they could add emojis to photos and share the results.
The campaign operated as a local activation within Pepsi's broader global summer platform, translating a worldwide seasonal push into a format designed specifically for Ukrainian audiences. Rather than relying on conventional click-through advertising, the mechanic used Shazam technology to bridge the gap between a passive television viewing moment and active mobile participation. At a time when Shazam was described as relatively new to the Ukrainian market, this integration carried a degree of novelty that a more mature digital market might not have afforded. In the United States and Western Europe, audio-recognition apps had already become commonplace tools for music discovery and second-screen engagement, but in Ukraine the technology represented a fresher proposition for mainstream consumers.
The campaign's objectives aligned with the dual priorities of a fast-moving consumer goods summer push: drive brand salience among younger, digitally active consumers and generate social sharing through user-created content. By giving users the ability to personalise photos with emojis and distribute them via the promotional site, Pepsimoji aimed to extend the campaign's organic reach beyond the paid television placement. The single media asset documented in connection with the campaign suggests a focused, contained execution rather than a multi-format rollout, pointing to a strategy that prioritised depth of engagement within one channel combination over breadth across many. Across the Ukrainian food and drink advertising landscape in 2018, campaigns that fused broadcast reach with mobile interactivity were still carving out their place, making Pepsimoji an early experiment in that converging space.
Pepsi positioned Pepsimoji within its established global summer campaign framework, using local digital execution to make a universal seasonal platform feel immediate and participatory for Ukrainian consumers. The strategic rationale rested on a straightforward insight: young consumers in Ukraine, as elsewhere, were already moving between screens during television viewing, and a mechanic that rewarded that second-screen behaviour with a creative, shareable payoff could generate engagement that a passive spot could not.
The choice of Shazam technology was not incidental. As reported by Clapboard, Shazam was described as new to the Ukrainian market at the time of the 2018 activation, meaning that the act of Shazaming a television advertisement carried an element of discovery in itself. This novelty factor is a meaningful strategic advantage in markets where consumer familiarity with a technology is still forming, because the mechanic becomes part of the entertainment rather than a functional afterthought. Competitors such as The Coca-Cola Company, which held approximately 42.8 percent of global carbonated soft-drink industry share in 2018 according to data cited on Scribd, were simultaneously investing in mobile-first summer activations across European markets, heightening the competitive pressure on Pepsi, which held roughly 25.6 percent of global carbonated soft-drink industry share in the same period, per the same source. In that context, finding a locally differentiated angle for a global summer push had clear strategic value.
The emoji customisation layer served a secondary strategic purpose rooted in the lifestyle positioning Pepsi had maintained since the launch of its Live for Now platform in 2012, as documented by Clapboard. Emojis function as a universal youth-culture currency, and giving Ukrainian consumers the tools to embed that language into personal photos connected a branded moment to everyday digital self-expression. The food and drink category in Ukraine, like other emerging European markets, was seeing increasing competition for the attention of younger demographics, making participatory creative formats an increasingly attractive strategic instrument for brands operating in the non-alcoholic drinks segment.
The creative execution of Pepsimoji rested on a three-stage mechanic developed by Havas Digital Kyiv. A Pepsi television commercial served as the trigger, prompting viewers to open Shazam and scan the audio of the advertisement. That single action transported the user to a mobile promotional site, where the creative experience began in earnest: users could select photos, apply emoji overlays, and share their finished compositions. The design logic was clean and low-friction, removing the barriers that more elaborate interactive campaigns sometimes impose on casual viewers.
Production credits for the Pepsimoji campaign are not publicly documented beyond the agency attribution to Havas Digital Kyiv. The creative direction of the mobile site and the television commercial that anchored the mechanic remain unattributed in available public records. What the execution does reveal, however, is a deliberate choice to keep the user journey short. The Shazam scan replaced the need for a URL, a search query, or a QR code, each of which introduces friction. The mobile site then delivered an immediate creative reward — the emoji tool — rather than asking users to navigate through information or register an account. That economy of steps is a considered creative and UX decision, one suited to a summer lifestyle campaign where the mood is spontaneous rather than considered.
Visually, the emoji customisation format aligned Pepsimoji with the aesthetic vernacular of the platforms its Ukrainian target audience used daily. By 2018, emoji-led visual communication had become a dominant mode of expression across messaging and social platforms popular among younger demographics globally, and the campaign's creative team at Havas Digital Kyiv channelled that existing behaviour rather than asking consumers to adopt a new one. The result was a campaign whose creative craft lay less in production spectacle and more in the precision of its interaction design, matching the tone and texture of a digital summer for non-alcoholic drink consumers in Ukraine.
No verified performance data for Pepsimoji is publicly available. No campaign-specific sales lift, market-share change, or brand-tracking figures have been documented by Pepsi, PepsiCo, or Havas in connection with the 2018 Ukrainian activation, and no trade press reviews from publications including Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious have been located. Similarly, no verifiable social media discussion specific to the activation has been documented on Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and no verified awards were recorded across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards.
Structurally, however, the campaign's effectiveness can be assessed through the logic of its design. The Shazam integration eliminated one of the most significant barriers in mobile activation: the distance between a broadcast impression and a digital interaction. In a market where Shazam technology was relatively novel, as reported by Clapboard, that mechanic had the potential to generate genuine curiosity-driven participation rather than passive awareness. The emoji-sharing component introduced a social amplification loop, whereby each piece of user-generated content became a secondary impression for Pepsi's summer brand positioning in Ukraine.
The campaign's single documented media asset suggests it was not a high-volume, multi-format production, which limits the scale of any potential impact but also reflects the proportional investment appropriate to a localised digital experiment. Pepsimoji earns a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100, reflecting a mechanically sound and strategically coherent idea that was constrained by limited documented output and the absence of any verified post-campaign measurement to confirm whether its interactive premise translated into meaningful consumer engagement in the Ukrainian market.
Pepsimoji was a digital campaign created by Havas Digital Kyiv for Pepsi, launched in Ukraine in June 2018. Users Shazamed a Pepsi television commercial to access a mobile site where they could add emojis to photos and share them, supporting Pepsi's global summer campaign platform.
Viewers used the Shazam app to scan the audio of a Pepsi television commercial. The scan directed them to a mobile promotional site. Shazam was described as relatively new to the Ukrainian market at the time, giving the mechanic an element of novelty that reinforced its appeal as part of the 2018 summer activation.
Havas Digital Kyiv created Pepsimoji for Pepsi. The campaign was published in Ukraine in June 2018 as a localised execution within Pepsi's broader global summer platform. Specific production credits, including creative direction and directing roles, are not publicly documented in available records.
Pepsimoji did not win verified awards. No recognition has been recorded for the campaign across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, according to Clapboard's research into the 2018 Ukrainian Pepsi activation by Havas Digital Kyiv.
Pepsimoji received a Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100. The score reflects a structurally coherent mechanic and a clear strategic rationale for the Ukrainian non-alcoholic drinks market, offset by limited documented creative output and the absence of publicly verified post-campaign performance data for the 2018 activation.
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