Pepsi Skips Superbowl For Social Marketing
Pepsi knows no advertising spot is wanted as much as one on Superbowl Sunday. Traditionally all the brands advertising during the big game use every trick in the book to create the most memorable, noteworthy commercials. Pepsi has always been present on Superbowl Sunday, but not anymore from now on.
After 23 years of advertising on Superbowl Sunday, Pepsi has decided to invest the money in a $ 20 million dollar social programme.
On January 13, Pepsi will launch their programme called ‘The Pepsi Refresh Project‘. People can contribute by naming a project in their community that needs help. The projects that get the most votes will receive help from Pepsi. With this project Pepsi hopes they will create a wave of do-gooding on a smaller scale with people funding community projects themselves.
ABC says the step Pepsi has taken is a risky one, opening up a Superbowl spot for Coca-Cola (who haven’t decided on advertising on Superbowl Sunday yet). Also, a brand that spends most of its money on television ads has to be certain this will work out, having lost quite some revenue in the past year.
In my opinion Pepsi is not a do-gooder brand at all, even though they produce their goods in a climate-neutral way and donate to charity. To me that’s not part of their image so I can’t imagine asking them to fund a project in my community. And even if this project does get off the ground, Pepsi still has to make an enormous leap to get even close to Coca-Cola’s social domination. Do you think leaving Superbowl for social will do Pepsi good? Or will they just dig themselves a deeper hole in regards to trailing behind in the social scene?
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Hi Eelke,
Good article and a very interesting thought. At the moment it really seems that Pepsi is in a very deep waterhole, but other brands like Dell and Starbucks were in the postion of Pepsi Cola as well and when they turned to more social campaigns they revived. So I don’t think it is to late for Pepsi, but they must stay authentic and they must not make any fault.
Hi Rick,
I agree, there have been brands who were in very deep and managed to turn it around. In my opinion those brands might even be better at social because they have taken up using it in a real way, because they had to.
I think Pepsi still has to learn a lot about social, and I am not sure if their destiny lies in funding community projects. To me, a project a brand takes up has to feel right and be in accordance with the brand. Pepsi used to do a lot with music, why not stay on that road and make a social turn in a Sellaband kind of way for example? To me Pepsi funding community projects feels just as unadequate as McDonald’s sponsoring the Olympics and other sports acitivities
It is indeed a huge step for Pepsi. However, I think some people in the board were fed up with the big social defeat, and demanded a turn around?
If you look at engagement levels of both Pepsi and Coca Cola, Pepsi shows 274.000 engaged fans on Facebook- Coca Cola shows over 4 Million Facebook Fans!!!
The gap was so significant and clear, that Pepsi really needed to change it’s course dramatically.
If Pepsi is suddenly able to move away from traditional marketing and able to go full throttle towards a model which is more content-driven, engaged and focused on consumer dialogue… patience is a virtue my friends!
I’m not so sure if Pepsi will be able to close the gap with Coca Cola. I have seen too many brands sit and wait, and once they started they did not close in on their competitor(s) significantly.
I applaud Pepsi’s attempt though…
Cheers
Igor
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What if Pepsi were to have installed a temporary Wifi Network at the Stadium itself. A private stadium wide network, where access was free but via a Pepsi branded landing page or gateway page. The connection to the outside internet would also be there, but could be regulated to reach only popular Social Networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace etc..Read on: http://realvision.ae/blog/2010/01/4-ways-pepsi-could-have-used-social-media-advertising-at-the-superbowl/