(10 votes, average: 4.30 out of 5)
Pepsi will take a massive gamble this year, they are pulling their multi-decade, multi-million dollar Superbowl opening ad position and trading it in for a $20 million social campaign at levels we are yet to experience. To me, this doesn’t seem like a massive risk with the way social campaigns have played out in the last 12 months.
But, for a company that spends almost all it’s money on TV ads – it’s an incredible gamble, particularly when you only have 250,000 (actively engaged) facebook fans compared to Coke’s 4 million plus! 250k is a big number, but in comparison, it means they haven’t really been able to compete with coke online.
So the Pepsi Refresh Project is about getting the global community to nominate projects that need funding in local communities, you upload your video / project profile, gather as many votes as you can by spaming the social sphere and the top projects will win finding from $5k multiple times per month up to $250k a few times every month. That’s a serious spend. This campaign idea isn’t exactly original, infact we had a localised version of this exact campaign idea pitched to Mitre10 (national hardware giant in Australia) 2 years ago, just with a muuuch smaller budget! They didn’t think it would fly. Hmmm.
Entries open up on the 13th of January, but you can download official submission tool-kits to get ready! I’m very much looking forward to seeing the engagement levels and watching how the campaign pans out for Pepsi. Hopefully it’s a massive win for them, but I can’t help but feel perhaps they should have kept the Superbowl ad to tell the world about their social media campaign?! Click here to check out the campaign website. (via Mashable / Viralblog)
Related Digital Buzz Posts:
January 5th, 2010 at 5:45 am
This concept is a winner; will reap great benefits; Im sure the people at coke are scrambling to reply; no risk at all and can be pushed with their TVC and other traditional ATL vehicles; very powerful, emotional and consumer centric; GREAT WORK
January 5th, 2010 at 8:14 am
Coca Cola has been doing a very similar project in Turkey since 2005: http://www.undp.org.tr/Gozlem2.aspx?WebSayfaNo=1938 but of course social media usage is not the same, but the idea is very similar…
January 5th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
This is an interesting initiative, one sticking point would be, it states on the campaign website that entrants are only allowed from the US, shame it’s not truely global, that might have had a big impact in terms of really getting the global social community involved.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:33 am
I think Chase did this very recently through Facebook to garner money for special projects and non-profit/charity organizations – $5 million (US).
With the lagging numbers in the Super Bowl for the previous years this move isn’t surprising… great way to start out the New Year for Pepsi.
Not entirely sure how voting on projects will carry directly over to Pepsi sales but should be an interesting ‘social venture capital’ Angel fund endeavor…
Too bad they didn’t partner with someone like Social21 – which does this at its heart throughout the year… http://www.design21sdn.com
January 6th, 2010 at 5:26 am
Please don’t make outbound links popup windows/tabs. It’s unnecessary (doesn’t keep people on your site, for the marketing drone seeking “stickiness” as if it were still 1998) and it’s annoying to your readers.
January 6th, 2010 at 7:32 am
I find this to be a very interesting turn. Especially as everything I’ve been reading suggests the best possible way to use SM is to integrate it with your other media. I think keeping a portion of the spend with the SuperBowl might have made more even more sense.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
This is an ‘insert brand here’ type of initiative. I can’t see how the idea relates to Pepsi. Coke owns the whole ‘happy optimism’ space.
And I’m not sure that having more fans online equates to winning the game. It needs to be measured in terms of effort (from a marketing perspective), objectives, and how useful all those people actually are.
January 7th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Inviting the global online community to participate in USA-only projects (as per page 9 of the toolkit) leaves me with a bad taste. Americans aren’t the only ones who drink the sweet stuff. Perhaps the URL should be http://www.refreshamerica.com or the like.
Thanks, Pepsi. But this Asian will pass for now.
January 7th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Perhaps an integrated approach would have been best, with some budget still allocated to the Super Bowl, but leveraging a social campaign, which then engaged and spread the brand during and post the event.
Deems like a massive lost opportunity to engage millions and get them involved with their social strategies.
Its an interesting concept and may pay off, they will still need to gun their usual TVCs and ATL – but at the end of the day, I reckon they will wish they had stayed with the proposals for Janet Jackson get her cans out.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:21 am
Millennials will expect more and more of this type of marketing in years to come. I applaud Pepsi’s effort! The promotion (despite some flaws) will generate more buzz/active engagement in the 13-21 demographic than 10 Super Bowls.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:36 am
Does Pepsi forget that soda is a very low-involvement product? It seems like this campaign is extremely involved.
@ Kate, I completely understand. I was watching the reel and finished it a bit underwhelmed. There really missed the boat to connect this CSR to their actual business.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:01 am
Love this.
January 20th, 2010 at 4:09 am
Good Ideal! All I can say is good luck.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:39 am
It’s easy to associate Pepsi with radical, and memorable Super Bowl exposure. But.. 3D Glasses, Cindy Crawford, and Justin Timberlake may not have the buzz reach that generosity does. In reality, does Pepsi have the luxury this year of hitting one niche market, or is the ‘Refresh’ project a force move for broad appeal and recognition? It seems like there would be nothing better than being remembered and associated with a tangible cause that anyone can relate to, and easily participate in. Kids to Corporations can put their name on this, and that could make this the most ‘Refreshing’ Super Bowl campaign yet.
(And a cold caffeine beverage can certainly inspire the cause).
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:31 am
interesting. let’s see how it works out but i think they must have had some thing in mind before going for such a big gamble. only time will tell if it will pay dividends or not.
social media has now become powerful. so lets wait and see.
January 23rd, 2010 at 4:39 am
Super Bowl is an institution. People who tune in EXPECT great ads as they do a great game. It is a turn on. The best ads get talked about in jock circles and beyond. It has peer value. Hope they get their money’s worth out of social media. Anyway, I prefer Coke.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:34 am
The uplink server for the Pepsi project times out before one can submit one’s project. Everyone tries at once after midnight on the 1st. One’s project is reviewed again before can finalize, taking bandwidth. Pepsi has too little servers, maybe.
It’s frustrating.