Why Pepsi’s Refresh Everything campaign isn’t anything new…

January 12th, 2010 • Comments Marketing, Social Media

So if you’re reading this, you’re probably already aware of the fact that Pepsi pulled their cash for Super Bowl advertising this year to instead be diverted into a campaign entitled “Refresh Everything,” an effort to put money back into American neighbourhoods based on user selection. It’s been repeated ad nauseaum within the marketers and social media spaces as the tipping point of major brands and social media, and you’ll likely hear even more about it as Super Bowl weekend approaches. It’s an interesting campaign to examine not because of the fact that it’s been funded with money diverted from traditional advertising (and an area that 5 years ago, would have been shocking to not have a brand like Pepsi participating in Super Bowl advertising), but in how little the execution actually has to do with the Pepsi brand. (I can just see the brainstorm taking place at Pepsi’s AOR: “What if we did a play on words with refreshing? You know, Pepsi has refreshing taste, cleaning up stuff is called a refresh – don’t those go perfectly together?”) Ultimately, it’s the supposed “big idea” that isn’t supposed to exist in the digital world – and while it doesn’t surprise those of us who are in the industry, it may be that public movement backed with money that actually legitimizes social media campaigns as a primary tactic in the public eye. (Disclaimer: We’ve proposed ideas like these to clients and been shot down because they’d never work. Pepsi will either prove us right or wrong, I guess.)

See, here’s the deal: this isn’t anything new. Companies that have seen universal success in the social media space have done so thus far because they’ve done one of two things:

1. They’ve provided a platform for either brand evangelists to speak strongly for their brand without much intrusion (see Coke’s Facebook fan page and their efforts to have it run by the fans that started it, despite Facebook’s efforts as a key example, or Honda’s Love campaign) or provided a place for brand evangelists/brand critics to provide input on the brand (with MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s Ideastorm being the key examples – Ideastorm taking Dell from the bottom of the pack in customer service satisfaction surveys to the top). or;
2. They’ve activated a campaign that has nothing directly to do with selling products, or pushing brand messaging around product benefits, instead focusing on social or entertainment-related movements that speak to aspriational messaging around the brand. Pepsi’s campaign is an example of this, but so is the Greatest Job in the World campaign, Mad Men’s fake Twitter accounts, the Nissan Hypercube campaign, Coke’s CokeTag Facebook application, the Halo launch ARG, etc, etc… all not pushing product messaging (”Buy This,” “Watch This,” etc,) but creating this experience around the brand, and creating the connection in people’s heads. This is strongly based on traditional marketing efforts of association, but with the added complexity of user interactivity and the ability for consumers to influence the successes of these campaigns.

In fact, this label can likely be applied to the digital space in general – yes, you need a corporate website; yes, you need information online, but if you’re looking to actually produce results (and you’re not in the eCommerce business), you need to create something that I’ll remember offline – and pushing straight product/brand messaging isn’t the way to go with that. Pepsi isn’t doing anything revolutionary; they’re just the first to throw this much cash behind an idea online that isn’t seen as helping to sell product – when in reality, it likely will.

What do you think? Do you agree with my two types of social media successes? Are there organic social media examples that live outside of this?