Pepsi stops Super Bowl TVC Ads; goes for Social Media
Feb 07
After 23 years of placing TV ads during the Super Bowl, Pepsi has decided to redirect the budget into another marketing channel – social media. To those who don’t know why this is a big deal, the Super Bowl is one of the most highly paid media buys in the US because it gets so much viewers. This is probably one of the strongest statements made by any multinational about the growing potency and effectiveness of engaging consumers through the internet. This reminded me of Pepsi’ rival, Coca-Cola, who in their annual strat briefing declared that they will focus more on digital and online efforts for 2010.
Here’s a sample of Pepsi’s Super Bowl ads featuring Justin Timberlake:
Imagine the budget used for that right? I mean hiring Justin Timberlake alone must have cost the company millions of dollars.
So what is Pepsi doing with Social Media?
They launched an online campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project which basically asks users to nominate causes that they can donate money to. After the nomination, people are asked to vote for which cause or community project they should donate $1M USD to. According to Pepsi, they’re going to give out around $20M in donations. For this project they’re tapping Facebook, Ustream, and even a specialized iPhone application. Pepsi stands to gain a lot from this if the people will promote their charities and causes to their own networks.
I love this campaign because it’s a win-win situation for the company and the consumers. Two thumps up for Pepsi. You guys definitely rock.
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I also saw the google ad.
Pepsi actually did a pretty awesome job in keeping up with Coke in the run up to the Super Bowl. Probably the most fascinating thing was watching Pepsi advertise… by not advertising!
The data behind http://www.adsofsuperbowl.com/ is makes for some very interesting reading!
Haha, you have a good point about the advertising by not advertising. They got a lot of PR by directing their budget to social media.