Pepsi Refresh Project Rejects Superbowl for Crowdsourced Charity

When I heard that Pepsi planned to replace its Superbowl ad with community project grants I thought that it was a great move.

Great for effectiveness and accountability in advertising. Great for the people who receive the grants instead of the media companies who receive the rental of their video stream. Great for Pepsi PR. Great for leadership in the ad business.

Pepsi had obviously done some homework and made some tough decisions. They had taken a new risk that followed on from their previous new branding risks. They were learning to do by doing.

Project Refresh was fresh.

But something kept niggling in the back of my mind.

Over the holidays I received a new book from my wonderful mom. I started reading immediately and this passage struck a chord.

It’s an impossible act to criticize, because (of course) charity is wonderful. Yet there’s something perverse about high-profile public altruism; it always feels like the individual is trying to purchase “good person” status with money they could never spend on themselves, anyway. Oprah is doing something good, but not necessarily for the motive of goodness. And the motive matters.

— From Chuck Klosterman’s excellent Eating the Dinosaur (p.31)

And that’s the nut of the thing, isn’t it?

The motive matters. Or, in this case, the motives matter. Because multiple motives exist at once and in the same promotion.

Pepsi wants to make the world a better place and it wants to sell more soda. It wants to provide funding for grassroots projects and enhance public perception of its brand.

As Edward Boches put it:

Done right the Pepsi Refresh Project has the potential to create one of the first examples of a company being a social media company rather than simply a company doing social media. But I intentionally put the emphasis on the word potential.

Social media at its best is about listening, engaging, connecting and inspiring. At first glance Pepsi’s efforts seem a little bit more about buying. Whether or not the effort turns out to be genuine and authentic remains to be seen.

To date the companies most committed to social media (Zappos, Whole Foods, Starbucks) are brands that have community and customer engagement in their DNA. None of them have traditionally been outbound marketers dependent on advertising that interrupts. They’ve used social media naturally for everything from customer service to community building and crowdsourcing.

The question is whether Pepsi, simply by giving away money and deciding to support causes, will come across as authentic or exploitive.

So the question: is this a company being a social media company or a company doing social media? What do you think?

Tags:
charity, Chuck Klosterman, Edward Boches, giving, grants, Pepsi, Pepsi Refresh Project, PR, Refresh Everything, Super Bowl, Super Bowl Ads

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[...] As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a little conflicted about the Pepsi Refresh Project. [...]

[...] As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a little conflicted about the Pepsi Refresh Project. [...]

Who Cares, why they did it? I imagine the worthy receipients of the £20M aren’t qustioning if they sold their soul to corporate greed as they are feeding starving children, setting up abandoned pet Sanctuaries, setting up field trips for under-priveledged schools etc. They are probably feeling damned lucky to have found a company ‘doing something different’

I don’t like pepsi, personally. For about 20 years now have always preferred Coke. I live in England and only heard about this in the economist today. I’m buying Pepsi in 2010. Whatever the motives… you did some good for a lot of people – Pepsi! Thanks.