Pepsi cheers the social web – replacing the Super Bowl budget with a web based community project
In 2010 Pepsi will not place ads in the lucrative Super Bowl broadcast, the most ratings’ generating TV event of the year.
It is a reversal of a 23 years old advertising policy that has become a tradition and almost a part of the Super Bowl fabric, where millions used to wait to see what will Pepsi come up with for the broadcast. The corporate has decided to switch its advertising strategy and replace $20 million worth of 30 seconds ads with a social media web based campaign.
In 2010 Pepsi is going to be starting a new campaign called “The Pepsi Refresh Project”, where money will be given to communities to help refresh them. This time it’s not about giving them Pepsi to drink, but helping build up communities, or help communities built around good causes, and need extra money to pull them off from tough times.
The Pepsi Refresh Project website will become a community gathering place where people can submit projects they want Pepsi to sponsor , and visitors to the site will vote on the projects they feel deserve to receive the money. $20million is allocated for this project.
From a traditional advertising point of view, this move can be conceived risky for Pepsi, breaking a years’ long life style brand image building, especially at the time when carbonated soft drinks have been in decline during the last several years, and the biggest drop in consumption is among teens.
But instead of pondering what potential damage is Pepsico causing its brand, dropping all its Super Bowl budget and not participating in its traditional TV based marketing platform, this move is a brave decision to tap into the hottest web lifestyle trends and associate its brand identity with good causes.
Pepsico is building a multilayered cause -based marketing campaign, harnessing in this move several key factors to create a new brand identity for Pepsi and contributing to its corporate image as a responsible company, with high social awareness and a sense of purpose that exceeds its brands’ performance.
Harnessing a do good community structure for the infrastructure of The Pepsi Refresh Project, taps on the several of web 2.0 and the social web trends of its target market:
- Harnessing a community of people around a good cause in a community structure capitalizes on
- Giving a people a sense of purpose and social capital in giving their voice for a worthy cause
- Becoming a valuable source for social do good
- Tapping to a central web trend of not only talking to people in their gathering places but taking an active initiating part in building one;
- Connecting the Pepsi brand with social values, involvement in community life and a do good life style, and not just
- individual hedonistic life style of fun and being easy going
- Connecting the Pepsi brand with a vibrant beat of web lifestyle through communities, social networks and the internet as a central gathering place
- Harnessing the power of we are smarter than we in building a community power in the decision process of where to allocate money
Harnessing a do good campaign through communities that will be built around a bigger lifestyle object or cause, a passion that harnesses people, is a reflection of an emerging zeitgeist that marks a dominant trend for the web and the physical world alike.
