Yesterday, Pepsi launched the second year of its Pepsi Refresh Project, calling on people from across the US to submit ideas that have the power to move communities forward.
The categories are Education, Communities and Arts & Music, but in addition to these three, Pepsi will announce a new Pepsi Challenge each month. This month, Pepsi is challenging fans to channel their love of music to drive social changeby asking, “How would you rock the house for a good cause?”
Pepsi is enabling innovative ideas through the Pepsi Refresh Project, a platform for inspiration, learning and taking action. By awarding more than $1.2 million each month to ideas that receive the most votes at www.RefreshEverything.com, Pepsi aims to encourage ideas that capture the youthful optimism in all of us. Pepsi truly believe that every individual can refresh the world!
Pepsi’s Refresh Project has generated tens of millions of votes and countless tweets and Facebook posts in 2010. Next year, PepsiCo will take it global.
In short: this year Pepsi shunned their US advertising budget for Super-Bowl (of over $20 Million) and decided to put it into social media and the Refresh Project instead. The project has generated tens of million of votes and a countless number of tweets and Facebook posts, and the Pepsi brand itself has reached more than 2.7 million fans on Facebook (a growth of more than one million within in less than two months and still counting).
This fall, marketing director for Pepsi, Ana Maria Irazabal, expressed that “the Refresh Project is helping sales by linking charity in customers’ minds with their feelings about the brand”, and she also expressed that Pepsi will expand the Refresh Project globally in 2011 (The Huffington Post).
The Refresh Project embraces the four Es marketing model and represents a shift away from traditional marketing to marketing with a higher purpose.
Pepsi, Dove and Intel, highlighted in the three previous posts, all embrace the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity in their marketing strategies. But, of course, approach the model in different ways.
While Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty is more emotional in its approach, Pepsi’s Refresh Project has an engaging point of departure. Intel’s Creators Project is approaching the four Es first and foremost by offering the audience experiences through exhibitions and videos. But in general, the three very different but all very successful brands bring emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity in to play in their overall communication and marketing strategies. They are all doing ‘good’ as well, with regards to the campaigns highlighted.
Could a soft drink really engage people and make the world a better place? Pepsi thinks so, if you take a look at one of the brand’s latest marketing initiatives, Pepsi Refresh Project. In 2010, Pepsi shunned their advertising budget for Super-Bowl (of over $20 Million) and decided to put it into social media and the Refresh Project. But, how does this project work?
Each month Pepsi gives a grant of 1,3 Million USD to businesses, people and non-profits having a positive impact on their community. Anyone can submit their ideas and promote people in their network, then visitors on the Pepsi Refresh site get to vote for their favourite projects. At the end of each month, finalists are selected to receive granted money in categories such as art & culture, health and education. The maximum 1000 submissions per day were entered in less than one day when the project first began. And the results, apart from an intense media coverage, is more than 1 600 000 fans on Facebook (still counting) and thousands of project submissions every month.
With the Refresh Project, Pepsi has succeeded in creating strong customer engagement across the US, by connecting emotionally to people. Through this project, Pepsi has also linked the brand to experiences of value; all ‘refresh projects’ have a good impact on society. The result of the campaign is that people associate the company with doing ‘good’. Besides this, the campaign also shows a bit of Pepsi’s brand personality, differentiating them from competitors. In this way Pepsi possesses an exclusive position in the minds of many.
Conversations between people are accelerating. To a very large extent, discussions have moved online to platforms such as Facebook, twitter and YouTube. Many brands are eager to join the conversation but quickly realise that old marketing rules no longer apply. Traditional marketing and advertising just isn’t as effective anymore. To be successful today brands need to engage consumers.
Nowadays, a customer can pass messages from one source to many, through a myriad of social networking opportunities. These can then be passed to the masses through viral marketing activities. Therefore, brands need to start to think of ROI not solely as in ‘return on investment’, but as ‘return on involvement‘ or ‘interaction’. This will enable them to embrace engagement in their marketing strategies.
Brands must dare to say good-bye to the monologue, pushing out messages, and welcome the dialogue, through engaging their customers.
To do this successfully, brands need to bring something of value to the dialogue - something people can appreciate and connect with. In this way your customers will become advocates of your brand and share it with others in their network. This is now more important than ever. As many as 90% of us trust recommendations from people that we know, and 7 out of 10 trust consumer opinions posted online (Nielsen).
Above you can watch clips from Tipp-Ex, Old Spice and Pepsi. These are three brands that understand the power of interaction and how to engage customers in their marketing campaigns. The Pepsi Refresh Project will be presented in a case study later on in this series about the four Es of emotions, experiences, engagement and exclusivity.
Not so long ago, brands wanted nothing but the big bands – to promote their (often big) brands. Today however, global companies such as Diesel, Mountain Dew (Pepsi) and Converse have adopted the ‘exploration strategy’, to reach the crowd and build their own fanbases.
Many things have changed within the music industry during the last fifteen years or so. The business is growing increasingly diverse as music fans enjoy a wide range of platforms to consume music. In the 80s and 90s most brands strictly wanted the big bands to promote their brands, because only they would generate the desired customer attention and raise sales (brand managers thought). Now however, brands have started to adopt what we at Heartbeats refer to as the ‘exploration strategy‘. Instead of spending loads of money on our time’s counterparts to Michael Jackson, Prince or Madonna, brands choose to promote new and up-coming talents, the superstars of tomorrow.
An early adopter of this strategy is fashion brand Diesel, with Diesel:U:Music (D:U:M), launched 10 years ago, as a yearly unsigned music talent award and a worldwide support network with new artists, labels, radio stations, journalists and producers across the world. Recently D:U:M partnered with Sonicbids, a music gig discovery and booking website, to launch Diesel’s Stupid for Music World Cup in celebration of D:U:M’s 10th anniversary. In World Cup style, indie bands battle for a chance to win not only prizes from Diesel, but a professional PR campaign, music video production and recording session as well.
Another brand that has adopted the ‘exploration strategy’ is Mountain Dew (Pepsi) with record label Green Label Sound, where the brand gives away free downloads and promotes new artists and bands - giving their audience something more than just a soft drink.
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Yet, another example of a brand exploring undiscovered artists and musicians is Converse with its Get Out Of The Garage contest, as well as its global creative project ‘You’re It’, launched earlier this year.
New technology has definitely opened the door for these kind of marketing strategies. However, it’s not enough to only be present at places where the audience is, or own a platform. Rather, marketing needs a higher purpose. A number of brands have understood this, and they are now building the fanbases of tomorrow, yet there are many that still have a long way to go… The ‘exploration strategy’ is one proven path to take.
Michael Jackson was not only the king of pop. His groundbreaking endorsement deal with Pepsi Coke in the early 1980s still should work as a reference for brands taking the logic next step in to music. Respect!