BBDO Argentina: How about a nice cold…”PECSI”?!

Very cool article in AdAge yesterday about Pepsi rebranding itself to suit the linguistics of a particular country – Argentina, in this case.

According to the story, Spanish speaking people — particularly those with an Argentine accent — tend to mispronounce the brand’s name. Instead of calling it “Pepsi”, about 25% of Argentina pronounces it as “Pecsi”.

So BBDO Argentina in Buenos Aires created a campaign that “officially” changes the beverage’s name to Pecsi in that country, bowing to the ways of the people.

Bonus fact: Pepsi is slightly cheaper than Coca-Cola in Argentine, and the above spot references this by saying no matter how you pronounce “Pecsi”, you’ll save money.

The campaign also includes a pretty cool website (even cooler if you know Spanish, Ignacio assures me) with a “Pecsipedia” a growing, user generated list of other words that are mispronounced in Spanish. Many liberties are taken with the new spellings, as I’m pretty sure that no matter how they may say it, Argentines don’t spell hip-hop and rock ‘n roll “jipjop” and “rocanrol.”