Pepsi Is Social

Pepsi is going to invest $20 million in social media outreach and leave the Super Bowl behind.

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. –ViralBlog

ABC thinks that Pepsi is taking a giant risk by not advertising during the Superbowl and opting to advertise online instead. . . Quite frankly that’s a load of crock. Superbowl ads are expensive and a giant risk in and of themselves. Social media marketing (when done right) works and for far less money.

A Super Bowl advertisement costs $3 million dollars per 30 seconds. Pepsi planned two 30 secoond ads and a 60 second ad… that’s $12 million. And the price went up over 10% between 2008 and 2009. Let’s do the math. That’s $12 million to reach 98 million viewers.. or about $0.12 per viewer.

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This doesn’t include, of course, the real gamble… hiring an agency that can produce a commercial that will actually drive tons of traffic to your brand.

[. . .]Pepsi can invest in viral or social technologies at a fraction of the cost and reach the same number of viewers. Of course it wouldn’t happen in a single event across 2 minutes… but who in their right mind would want it to? Pepsi needs a long-term strategy and some great products to bring it back. –Marketing Tech

The new social media campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project has an appropriate name, since a strong social media outreach focused on helping communities will no doubt refresh Pepsi’s declining profit margin while making the world a better place.

Good for you, Pepsi, for bravely leading the way into the social/digital era.