February 8/Buenos Aires, Argentina/States News Service -- Pepsi-Cola has become Pesi in Spain, as the soft-drink brand capitalizes on the fact that many Spanish speakers have trouble pronouncing the second "p" in Pepsi, Advertising Age reports.

A new commercial-within-a-commercial features Spanish soccer player Fernando Torres who cannot correctly say Pepsi on camera. After repeated takes, Torres tears the second P from a Pepsi logo and informs the director that everyone he knows says "Pesi."

Last year, Pepsi renamed its flagship soft drink "Pecsi" in Argentina after the way natives said the word. "Changing Pepsi to Pecsi was a way of gaining closeness [to the consumer] and transcending a mere value message," said Ramiro Rodriguez Cohen, a creative director with BBDO Argentina, which developed the campaign for Pepsi.

"This [Spanish] campaign is based on a universal insight: Pepsi is pronounced in many different ways, as was reflected in the BBDO Argentina campaign," said a spokeswoman for Pepsi's Spanish agency, Contrapunto BBDO.

A U.S. Pepsi spokesman said the company had no other renaming campaigns scheduled. "There currently are no plans to use similar advertising in other Spanish-speaking markets," he said.  

From the February 15, 2010, Prepared Foods E-dition