Join Forces with Top Brands at Portada Live, NYC, Sept, 19, 2024!

Best Practices: Pepsi, Refresh Everything Campaign

Pepsi will continue its grant-based Refresh Everything campaign into 2011, as well as extend it globally into markets across Europe, Latin America and Asia, based on the success it has received already in the U.S.

Content

Pepsi will continue its grant-based Refresh Everything campaign into 2011, as well as extend it globally into markets across Europe, Latin America and Asia, based on the success it has received already in the U.S.

The campaign

The campaign encourages consumers to submit applications for grants from Pepsi, for which users can then vote on the Refresh Everything site. The most popular ideas or causes are then rewarded with a portion of a $1.3 million a month fund, financed by the company's marketing budgets.

PepsiCo Beverages' head of digital, Shiv Singh, said the campaign has not only benefited grant recipients and the communities in which they lie, but has also had an "extremely positive" effect on the Pepsi brand. "It's hard to directly compare this campaign with previous ones, because we're not measuring impressions, we're measuring the impact on a community… but based on more strategic metrics like brand health, favorability, and intent to purchase, it's performed exceedingly well," he said, adding, "It's working for the communities, and it's working for us."

Digital Media and Social Networks

The campaign includes an interactive web site RefreshEverything.com, where people can nominate or vote.

“From a branding perspective, the project and the RefreshEverything.com site are media properties themselves. There's always talk of brands becoming media properties, but not much proof in the pudding," said Singh suggesting the site now attracts more unique users on a monthly basis than sites with which the brand would previously have considered purchasing display advertising.

In addition to that traffic, the site has accrued a total of 7,500 applications and 42 million votes in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, the brand's "likes" on Facebook have increased from 225,000 to well over a million in that period, and its Twitter following and YouTube presence have also grown.

Global Expansion

That success has prompted not only a continuation of the program in the U.S., but a global extension across European, Latin American, and Asian markets in 2011. Sing said details of how the campaign will be executed in local markets have not yet been finalized.

In the next few weeks the brand will be asking its 1 million Facebook "likers" to suggest ways to improve the project, and it seek integrations with organizations such as sporting institutions and leagues. Singh pointed to its current relationship with Major League Baseball teams – through which individual teams were invited to submit their own ideas to the project – as ways to reach and involve more consumers and communities.

Overall, Singh said the campaign and the site show no signs of flat lining in terms of consumer interest or traffic, and that the viral effect should help it continue to grow into 2011.

Meet & Learn
Portada Live Events

Popular Now

Boost Your Sales

Who is Moving Now

The Latest

Get our e-letters packed with news and intelligence!