Will the Pepsi Refresh campaign be successful? Why or why not?
This year, PepsiCo did something that shocked the advertising world. After 23 straight years of running ads for its flagship brand on the Super Bowl, it announced that the number-two soft drink maker would be absent from the Big Game. But in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XLIV, Pepsi was still the second-most discussed advertiser associated with the event. It wasn’t so much what Pepsi wasn’t doing that created such a stir as much as what it was doing. Rather than continuing with the same old messages of the past, focusing on the youthful nature of the Pepsi Generation, and using the same old mass-media channels, Pepsi is taking a major gamble by breaking new ground with its advertising program. Its latest campaign, called Pepsi Refresh, represents a major departure from its old promotion efforts in two ways:
(1) The message centers on a theme of social responsibility, and
(2) The message is being delivered with a fat dose of social media.
At the center of the campaign is the Pepsi Refresh Project. PepsiCo has committed to award $20 million in grants ranging from $5,000 to $250,000 to organizations and individuals with ideas that will make the world a better place. The refresheverything .com Web site greets visitors with the headline, “What do you care about?” PepsiCo accepts up to 1,000 proposals each month in each of six different areas: health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods, and education. Then crowdsourcing takes over, as consumers vote for their favorites. Pepsi awards the grants each month. One-third of the way through its one-year run, the company had funded more than 100 projects, giving approximately $5 million back to local communities. The company stated that the project was right on target to award the full $20 million by the end of the yearlong effort.