Pepsi ‘Night Edition’ Anthem Case Study – Original Music Production by Mango Jam Studio

Pepsi’s Night Edition was the perfect complement to this year’s FIFA World Cup. Since most of the matches would be played very late at night, or in the early hours of the morning, in our part of the world, staying awake for the beautiful game was going to be a challenge.

Enter Pepsi Night Edition. A caffeine-infused pick-me-up designed to keep football fans awake, so they wouldn’t miss a single moment.

So far, so good. But there was one small problem.

We received the launch brief barely a week before kick-off, and our task was to create a stadium anthem that would resonate with every football fan.

There was another catch. English and Arabic football chants are very different.

After hours of researching football ultras from around the world, highly organised supporter groups famous for their coordinated chanting, relentless energy and incredible stadium atmosphere, we quickly realised there wasn’t a single style that naturally translated across both languages. We needed to find something that felt authentic to both audiences while remaining simple enough to become instantly memorable.

Working closely with the creative team at Havas, we explored multiple melodies before settling on one that was approved by both Havas and Pepsi. The challenge wasn’t simply writing a catchy hook, it also had to satisfy the brief. The chant needed to build from a single voice into a full stadium of supporters, all within just 12 seconds, while also working as a condensed 6-second version.

A day later, fuelled by plenty of Night Edition, we had something.

A simple bilingual hook that captured the spirit of English football chants while sitting comfortably alongside rhythmic elements inspired by Arabian stadiums. More importantly, it survived the overnight test, and the client’s feedback.

Now all we had to do was make it sound like an actual football stadium.

Easier said than done.

The brief called for authenticity above perfection. We weren’t looking for polished singers, we wanted football fans. That meant deliberately avoiding pitch correction and embracing the imperfections that naturally happen when passionate supporters sing together. Every slightly sharp note, every rushed entrance and every imperfect harmony helped sell the illusion that this wasn’t a recording studio, it was a packed stadium.

With limited time available, it became all voices to the booth.

Professional voice talents joined the session, followed by everyone at Mango Jam Studio. Producers, engineers, composers, if you could talk, you were hired. Even members of the Pepsi and Havas teams stepped behind the microphone to contribute additional layers. The unscripted performances and mixture of voices gave the anthem exactly the raw character we were looking for.

The percussion also went through several iterations. We initially experimented with traditional Arabic percussion for the Arabic version and more conventional stadium drums for the English campaign. Eventually, it was decided that both languages should share the same driving rhythmic foundation, allowing the vocals themselves to carry the cultural flavour while maintaining one unified musical identity.

One aspect of the project was refreshingly different from most commercial productions. Instead of composing music after the film had been edited, we completed the anthem first. The production team then filmed the commercial around the music, allowing the visuals to inherit the rhythm and energy of the chant from the very beginning.

Of course, once the edit evolved, the music had to evolve with it. Layering the chants and reshaping the arrangement to fit the revised edits became the final challenge. Fortunately, because the performances had intentionally been recorded with a loose, live feel rather than being tightly quantised to a rigid grid, we could naturally adapt the anthem to the changing picture without losing its authenticity.

The final mix focused on creating scale. Layer upon layer of vocals, carefully crafted ambience and spatial processing transformed the recordings into something that genuinely felt as though thousands of supporters were singing together. With a little help from AI to enhance the stadium atmosphere even further, the studio soon resonated with a chant that felt like it had been captured in the middle of a World Cup match.

Technically, the production itself wasn’t particularly complex. The real challenge came from the pace of the project and the sheer number of moving parts. With Pepsi, Havas and multiple stakeholders involved on a FIFA World Cup campaign, countless versions travelled back and forth before everyone was happy with the result.

But that’s the nature of projects like these.

In the end, we created a bilingual football anthem that captured the excitement of the World Cup, worked seamlessly across cultures, and proved that sometimes the best instrument in the room is simply a crowd of passionate people.

Job done.

Now… time for some football.