Gone are the days when Pepsi quenched its advertising thirst with TV spots featuring the likes ofRay Charles, Cindy Crawford, and Britney Spears. Now, PepsiCo’s forward-thinking CEO Indra Nooyi seems instead comfortable greenlighting a marketing campaign that effectively says, “So long Super Bowl commercial – hello social media.”
As ABC News reported this morning, PepsiCo has made a landmark decision to end its 23-year run of advertising during the Super Bowl, replacing that brand-building effort with a yet-to-be-specified, $20M philanthropic social media campaign known only as The Pepsi Refresh Project.
The reason? As Vigilante CEO Larry Woodard relates in his ABC News article - “Pepsi’s Big Gamble” – it’s a matter of TV viewership and evolving demographics.
“As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased. The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company.”
This is a consequential transition for a marquee American brand. Pepsi has spent a reported $142M on Super Bowl Ads from 1999-2009, but is now pulling an “about-face” as to how it will interact with its customers. Logistically, the Pepsi Refresh Project is a large scale grant program, awarding funding for customer submitted philanthropy projects all geared toward “refreshing” local and worldwide communities. Strategically, Pepsi is hoping it will establish a long-term cycle brand recognition that will broaden its swath of appeal and reach new audiences.
Though brandishing a less expensive price tag (relatively speaking) than previous marketing endeavors, several authorities (including the author of this article) consider this move to be a major gamble for the choice of the new generation. Abdicating a Super Bowl presence and scaling back traditional marketing techniques could open up the door for competitors and lessen Pepsi’s visability (so they say).
I would wholeheartedly disagree. If nothing else, Pepsi is behind the marketing eight ball i.e. Coke unveiled a similarly world-focused social media campaign months ago. As has been documented time and time again, to advertise strictly according to traditional media is to jump aboard a sinking ship. With every day that passes, the dollars allocated for print, radio, and TV advertising see an increasingly diminishing return as viewership and engagement across those media are down. And social media is replacing their relevancy.
Why throw good money after bad? Seems to me that a continuation of the norm would be the real gamble. Yes, Pepsi is rolling the dice with this specific campaign – realistically it is difficult to predict the outcome in dollars and cents. Pepsi can only recognize that the social media arena is booming, and a significant investment there would be keeping pace with progress and trends (and where customer eyeballs spend their time).
But even if this campaign were to fail to meet Pepsi’s marketing and sales expectations, they would have gotten their feet wet in what is the gold-standard in marketing. This earns them priceless insight that will inform future social media campaigns to come, and there is serious value in learning those lessons sooner rather than later.
The same applies to small business owners as they delve into a small business social media campaign. The gains to be earned aren’t limited to large corporations – though many would be hard-pressed to sign a Cindy Crawford or a Britney Spears to rep their brand, any business can make marketing and sales inroads through social media.
