This is one of the most amazing examples of great brand behavior: The Pepsi Refresh Project. Instead of putting money into a Superbowl ad, the soda company decided to refresh the world, by giving away $20million of the complete year.

Pepsi are giving $1.3million in grants to projects that ‘refresh’ the Gulf in the wake of the oil spill. Voting started today. 10 votes per day per person. Please vote!

If you need inspiration how you can ‘refresh’ the Gulf, check out Fast Companies top-5 projects of Pepsi’s extension of The Pepsi Refresh Project.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

New Zealand born conceptual artist Paul Snowden has remixed one of his most iconic t-shirts, MINIMAL MY ASS, as a special edition for TBWA Berlin. The limited edition shirt comments on the ongoing discussion within the communication industry about how to integrate digital in the behavior of a brand. It does so by expressing a simple fact: there is no analog or digital world. There is only one world in which brands interact with their audience, so brands should behave coherently in everything they do. They must simply respect the way consumers digest media today. DIGITAL MY ASS.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

Today Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of facebook, shared his thoughts on the future of the communication industry with the delegates at the Cannes Lions Festival 2010. Commenting on the changes going on in the advertising industry he made clear that “advertising has changed. It is not about broadcasting but about engaging”.

Regarding his own company he shared some value that help him managing the facebook brand, that help him take the right decisions and that ensure that great people want to work for him: Openness, connectivity, new products are only measured against quality, not a timeline and putting the audience at the center of everything facebook does.

Join the conversation and listen to Mark on canneslions.com.

In 2010 Pepsi decided not to run an ad during the Super Bowl. For over 23 years they had taken the conventional approach of putting their can into a superstar’s hand and hoping that others would follow.

But as a brand that believes every generation can refresh the world, they wanted to change something. The decision was radical. No Super Bowl ad, but 20 million US dollars to fund projects that would make the world a fresher place. People where invited to submit their projects, and the whole world could vote. The budget for a one day event now funds a full year of causes. 1000 submissions are accepted every month, but when the Pepsi Refresh Project was launched this figure was achieved after 2 minutes. Since then, over one billion media contacts have been generated during the first twelve weeks of the project – and as the web buzz continues, even more staggering numbers are round the corner. But the numbers are only one side of the coin. More importantly, this campaign is producing value every day. Value for the community, value for the planet and, last but not least, value for Pepsi in the hearts and minds of its audience.

For question and further information simply email Carisa Bianchi.

John Hunt has been interviewed for Lürzer’s Archive latest publication. MAD blog shares parts of the interview with you. The full conversation on “the art of the ideas”, the world’s most awarded campaign ever “The Zimbabewean”, this years amazing examples of Media Arts “Gatorade – Replay” and the Pepsi Refresh Project can be found in the current print edition of Lürzers’s Archive.

L.A.: What, to you, are the most important changes advertising has gone through since you first got into the business?

John Hunt: Philosophically, probably the most important change is that we are losing our arrogance in just telling people what to do. We’re finally realizing we can no longer merely interrupt them and hope repetition will do the rest. We now have to be what they choose to engage in.

L.A.: There is a huge interest in all things digital now – also in advertising, of course. Has this interest, this turn towards digital, come at the expense of other media? Creatively as well as financially? What about print advertising? How do you see the future of print?

John Hunt: I guess it’s only natural that all things digital have moved to the centre of the target. When I see how my children consume media, it’s clearly different to when I was their age. This is a fundamental change as opposed to just “adding another media.” We have to rewire the way we think about communications.

It’s still being baked at the moment, but advertising will never be the same again. I still think, though, you have to have a great idea at the centre of everything you do. And that idea has to be your organizing principle. Media is now really any space or place between the brand and its audience. I don’t think this marks the death of print. It will, however, reset its position in the queue.

(…)

L.A.: What is some recent advertising that has impressed you?

John Hunt: I’m a big fan of the “Replay” work we did for Gatorade, out of L.A. It’s a really smart way of engaging an audience by giving people a second chance. I think the most memorable work, in the end, is usually based on a simple human truth.

Acknowledgments: The work “Replay” for Gatorade has been awarded 2 first Grand Prix awards by the jury of this years Cannes Lions Festival, topping the categories PR and Promo (June 22, 2010).

See what AdAge and Adweek say about this groundbreaking idea.

Rob Schwartz, Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\CHIAT\DAY Los Angeles. shares his thoughts on METAL POTENTIAL on his personal blog. This is what he said about Gatorade Replay:

This isn’t an ad. This is an idea. A big one. It was conceived to be the ultimate product demo. Here’s how it goes. What if you took two rival high school football teams and had them replay a significant game…15 years later. The teams would need to train and get back in shape. And oh yeah, they’d need plenty of Gatorade. Two teams on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border did this. Here’s the trailer, but got to MissionG.com to see more of the story. Also FOX has turned it into a series. You’ll find more info on that here.

By Tom Morton, executive planning director, TBWA\London Group

In a terrible blow to the ad industry’s carbon footprint, most people collecting Cannes Lions this year will have to fly over from the US.  American agencies have the budgets, the chutzpah and the easy familiarity with digital to pull off the campaigns the rest of the world wants to make.  Expect Team America to do better in South France than South Africa this year.

My self-serving full-disclosure prediction is that Pepsi Refresh and Gatorade Replay will challenge for top Titanium and Integrated Lions.  Both campaigns managed to give their brands a genuine role in the world, touching on some real human truths along the way.  Gatorade Rematch could edge it as it will touch the hearts of every alpha male viewer.  As soon as you see that Rematch gives former high school athletes a shot at redemption, Gatorade gets up there with The Wrestler and Jerry Maguire. Asked in an interview what made him cry, Sean Connery answered ‘athletics’.  Expect a similar reaction here.

DDB Stockholm’s Fun Theory campaign for the VW Golf could put in a strong showing.  ‘What if we spent the budget behind enabling people to have fun?’ is a pleasing conjecture for a global audience but it’s a bit too generic compared to the competition.

This year should see more maturity in the Cyber and Titanium Lions.  We won’t see any more funny-shaped barcodes walking off with big prizes.  Now it’s the turn of smart uses of existing technology to triumph over the novelties.  Having digital native Bob Greenberg chairing the Titanium Lions Jury will help here.   So we should see Tribal DDB’s rendering of Monopoly on Google Maps or Crispin Porter’s Twitter-based customer service Twelpforce getting recognition.

Film Lions could be a contest of old school craft against new school laughs as BBH’s The Man Who Walked Around The World vies for honours with W&K’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. The astonishing level of craft and performance in the Johnnie Walker epic should see the man in the kilt edging out the man ON A HORSE.

So that’s 2010.  In the interest of playing the prediction game, I prophesize that Nike’s Write The Future will storm the 2011 Film Lions, assuming any of the featured players escape the curse of Nike and are still standing by the end of the World Cup.

One of the bright young teams at TBWA in Auckland are selling shares in their future to raise the cash to get them to Cannes. Invest in them at their website, click here.

The benefits for the investors are simple, as the team states on their website: By investing, shareholders can claim they where ahead of the pack, on the money, had their finger on the pulse or any other metaphor that means they were part of a successful social media experiment.

What a nice disruptive idea.