Refresh Project Overview Created in 2010 with the money they would have used for the Super Bowl Revolutionary experiment in social media Invested itself in community-building projects Allowed the consumer to vote for whatever project would receive the grants Ended up lasting 2 years Had over 60 Million people involved Used 1/3 of their annual marketing budget ($20 million in grants)

What Happened? Website has 6 categories: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, the Planet, Neighborhoods and Education Cause Marketing did not work so well for a soda company Sales did not pick up Were passed up by Coca-Cola Social media freaked out when Pepsi pulled out of the Super Bowl Image of Pepsi changed in consumers mind The people who were voting were often times not Pepsi drinkers The project really didn’t have anything to do with Pepsi’s Brand

Social Media Use Used Facebook, and Twitter posts since they already had a large following Increased Facebook likes by more than 600% and more than 140,000 tweets over Twitter Many contestants themselves were promoting the contest by sharing and posting on Twitter and Facebook asking for help voting Their website RefreshEverything.com was their main social media source for the project which brought in 17 million unique users MLB players created videos on YouTube challenging people to vote for their teams $200,000 grant that Pepsi would provide (Minnesota Twins ended up winning and funding the Courage Center’s Rolling Twins youth softball wheelchair team) Pepsi promoted celebrities Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon to pitch ideas and promote the Refresh Project

Problems Pepsi was accused by people of favoring particular charities Didn’t know the objectives before executing the project Instead of standing for one issue, the possibilities created by consumers were all over the place (multiple categories made it hard to see what Pepsi stands for) Were they in it for soda sales? Was the objective to do good?

How to make things better When pushing for a social media marketing experiment, make sure you know your objectives Pepsi should have had a clear outline of their goal in this project. I would have utilized all social media outlets better by posting more frequently. It seems like they focused a lot on their main RefreshEverything.com instead of also focusing on the other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter Make the project relevant to your brand. Pepsi could have linked the project with providing beverages like water to countries in need. It’s hard to link this project with a soda company Now Pepsi lives off of the idea that “Coke is timeless; Pepsi is timely” Pepsi learned that their brand is all about pop culture