This is my first ever blog entry which I’m pretty sure makes me social media Luddite! But although I don’t actively participate in social media I am very much interested in how it is used – increasingly so - by companies to engage with their consumers.
PepsiCo is arguably a leader in this area having integrated the medium holistically into their global marketing strategy - from the decision to launch the Pepsi Refresh Project in the US at the beginning of this year to the Dewmocracy initiative that crowdsourced the Mountain Dew line’s new flavors.
For the past year, the Pepsi brand has been using its "refresh everything" mantra to ask people about ways to change their world. But at the beginning of this year the brand decided to go further with the launch of the Pepsi Refresh Project - a grants scheme providing millions of dollars ($1.3 million every month) to fund good ideas that ‘make the world a better place’. But it isn’t a traditional grant scheme - consumers list their project ideas online and get to vote for the winners. And it uses social media to do this – relying heavily on Twitter, Facebook and a website to encourage submission of ideas and voting.
This initiative is being presented as Pepsi’s alternative to spending on television advertising at the US SuperBowl, which emphasises the increasing importance of social media to brands. The emphasis is shifting onto how a brand can figure out what its consumers’ value and how the brand can address that. It appears PepsiCo has moved the conversation it started with its consumers onto the next stage by actively helping them turn their ideas into action.
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