Pepsi Refresh Project brings good ideas to life

    

In 2010, Pepsi launched the Pepsi Refresh Project, a social media campaign that lets the online community decide which individuals and groups get awarded grants to help do well in the world. Social media campaign made the process empowering consumers and fostering new type of collaboration with fans. The Pepsi Refresh Project allocated grants for the average consumers to make their ideas become reality. Grant increments of $5K, $25K, $50K, and $250K were given to ideas that received votes online. Ultimately, the program received more than 58 million votes from the American public.

Planning & Programming (Hayes et al,2013, p.115)

·      Create intellectual capital around “where ideas come from”; position Pepsi as the credible motivator to push the everyday American to become the next social entrepreneur

·      Publically announce the allocation of funds to different categories that projects would fall under to allow a national spotlight on the implementation of ideas

·      Get new perspectives on project from employees, bottling and retail partners to generate local news angels

·      Publicize PRP through Hispanic and English language press to increase awareness and participation

·      Promote RefreshEverything.com as the online destination; encourage individuals to submit ideas and vote

·      Use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to encourage online interaction

·      Establish partnerships with national brands to raise broad awareness of the PRP 


Social media analysis

The campaign generated 2.9 billion audience impressions within the eight-month period from starting. Through social media, the campaign had increased Facebook likes by more than 600 percent and more than 140,000 tweets over Twitter. The RefreshEverything.com website brought in 17 million unique visitors and 4.5 million votes online for ideas. The website had over 17 million unique visitors in less than a year with more than 4.5 million votes for projects. The campaign projects had over 1.2 million comments online.

Facebook connect: 
As an alternative to a multi-step sign-up process, individuals could access Pepsi Refresh through Facebook, taking advantage of their userbase of 400 million active users at the time.

A Facebook application: 
Visitors could use the Pepsi Refresh Facebook application to search for ideas, see what their friends had chosen, vote for their favorite projects and share them throughout the Facebook ecosystem.

Twitter and Widget Integration:
 Grant-seekers could promote their projects through a pre-populated Twitter message, embeddable YouTube videos or an HTML widget to place on any personal blog or site—all of which made it easy to spread and promote their unique messages.

Mobile web: 
Huge collaborated on a mobile initiative that included a WAP-enabled version of the site, leading to full-fledged iPhone and Android applications. The applications leveraged voting and community aspects, while expanding on the location-based nature of the program.

Influencer outreach: 
We courted influencers in the social sphere to jumpstart the campaign and quickly build credibility for the Refresh initiative. 

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Why #Pepsi refresh project# is so successful

A Pepsi spokeswoman said: "Our equity research on Pepsi Refresh Project showed that consumers felt Pepsi was a brand that cares about the community and that the program was a strong fit with their perception of Pepsi as a forward-thinking, innovative brand. We saw that consumers that knew about the Pepsi Refresh Project when choosing a cola chose Pepsi. And research shows that the social network that we developed includes the largest engaged fan base of any beverage company active today."

The objective of Pepsi refresh project is to do good in life rather than selling more soda, which did profound impact. The Refresh Project successfully created a virtual community integrating into vote process through social media. Pepsi engaged and empowered fans to join this project to share their ideas to good life. Both forms of users incorporated their own networks into the Pepsi Refresh community in essence expanding the community as a whole, while also engaged members of the community themselves.