Check out how The New York Times comments on the most recent expansion of Pepsi’s Refresh Project:
Now Pepsi is donating $1.3 million through its Pepsi Refresh Project, which uses a Web site, refresheverything.com, to determine grant winners by popular vote. That sum is in addition to $20 million that Pepsi has vowed to give away in 2010 in the cause marketing effort, the term for collaborating with nonprofit organizations to bolster both charities and the reputations of companies.
The company will award 32 Do Good for the Gulf grants: two for $250,000 and 10 each for $50,000, $25,000 and $5,000. Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback, has signed on as a spokesman to promote the effort.
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.
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.
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.
This is one of the coolest examples of todays brand behavior: The Pepsi Refresh Everything Project. See, what they say about themselves: “We’re looking for people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. Look around your community and think about how you want to change it.” and check it out. Simply click HERE for all the necessary information.
FYI: The Pepsi Refresh Project Round 1 Voting and Round 2 Submissions are NOW OPEN! It’s time to start campaigning for the ideas you like, voting for the ideas that will make the world better, and submitting your ideas for Round 2!
If you have any comments or suggestions please email Rob Schwartz.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR There’s no such thing as a captive audience. Gone are the days of neat and discrete moments in time where advertisers talked to target audiences. Today’s is a culture in constant motion. And the dizzying array of platforms, constant connectivity and ever-increasing speed of information has left the ad industry out of sync with its audience. People don’t live in quarterly campaigns, nor do they distinguish communication channels. They expect faster and constant communication with their brands across more media platforms and conversations. Every month, week, day, on the hour. It’s now about how fast brands can move, how relevant they can be and what they can offer in the here and now. There is a always need for “slow” and carefully crafted brand strategies and stories. But, with culture in constant motion there is also a need for marketers to be quick and nimble, so they can find opportunities where their brands can tap into cultural conversations that are part of people’s lives.
BRAND BEHAVIOR Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer for TBWA\Worldwide, challenges marketers to “advertise at the speed of culture”— making the case for designing constant communications at the intersections of product, culture, news and events. It’s a fleet of micro-initiatives as ongoing communication programs with your audience in response to culture 365 days a year. It’s about being opportunistic and leveraging key moments with brand relevance. It’s about owning the current conversation to generate faster and more frequent communication points. It’s a new form of CRM using a mix of planned, anticipative and reactive micro initiatives.
PLANNED initiatives are created around identified cultural moments relevant to your brand. By asking “Who do you think is refreshing music?” Pepsi leveraged the cultural conversation around this year’s Coachella Music Fest with their RefreshMusic Twitter feed featuring Thievery Corporation’s Rob Myers as a guest tweeter. By putting a unique spin on the concert for music lovers, Pepsi is not only letting tweeters experience the festival in new ways, but is also bringing the brand idea “refresh everything” to life.
ANTICIPATED is scenario based planning that requires marketers to be smart enough to see the cultural conversation and be ready to act upon it. Visa’s seemingly “real-time” ad, celebrating Michael Phelps’s Olympic record eight gold medals, proved the brand recognized the Game’s most talked about story. The TV spot had footage of Phelps’s previous wins literally moments after his record-breaking performance, helping Visa go beyond being a sponsor and become a part of the conversation surrounding the Games.
REACTIVE is being nimble enough to surprise and delight your audience by your brand tapping into the zeitgeist. In President Obama’s acceptance speech he declared the family’s intention of getting a dog. The next day, Pedigree began crafting a response. A day later an ad in USA Today urged the President to adopt: “We’d love to help you fulfill your first campaign promise.” Pedigree’s quick actions helped place them in the cultural conversation regarding the President’s pet decision.
Fast Company magazine’s inaugural ranking of the 100 Most Creative People in Business puts Jonathan Ive, SVP of Industrial Design at Apple, in the top spot; Lee Clow, TBWA’s Global Director of Media Arts is named #32. In a press release Fast Company magazine said: “In an industry that tends to spit out anyone with a speck of gray hair, the brain behind the Energizer Bunny, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, and Adidas’s ‘Impossible is Nothing’ campaign continues to be one of the most creative forces in the game.Last year, as global director of TBWA\Worldwide, he [Lee Clow] helped the Omnicom-owned agency lure a phenomenal roster of new business, including Pepsi and the global Visa account.”
“Creativity cannot be reduced to a formula,” says Fast Company editor Robert Safian. “There will no doubt be controversy over how we ended up with these 100 individuals, why certain names are missing, why one person is ranked higher – or lower – than someone else. But there is a perspective in our list: Taken in its entirety, it’s a snapshot of the range and depth of creativity across our business landscape – a remarkable and perhaps surprising source of strength in these times of turmoil.”
The list includes engineers from Facebook and Google, movie directors and fashion designers, architects and inventors. “We emphasized those who creativity addresses a larger issue – from the future of our energy infrastructure to the evolution of philanthropy to next-generation media and entertainment,” explain the Fast Company editors, in the introduction to the list. “And while we couldn’t see how lauding Steve Jobs would show much creativity, we also couldn’t ignore the outsized impact Apple has had on our business culture. That’s why Apple’s chief designer heads our list at No. 1.”
Fast Company
