Saved By The Bell? No! Saved By Pepsi

Referring to my previous post about the challenges the startups are up against in the East Coast vs. the ones in the West, I totally forgot to address the lack of funding in the social media space in DC area. This was the main reason I had to give up my CEO job with the DC based startup, Searchles I headed from summer of 2006 till last year. Those of you survived, hang in there. Your luck is about to change this year. Thanks to Pepsi with their brilliant new advertising move

This year, Pepsi is pulling the plug on their TV Super bowl ad spot they have held for 23 years, and trading it for $20 million social media campaign called The Pepsi Refresh Project. I think this is a great move by them. It was time for a change. This will drive their product across a more international market as well. It will also hit the younger generation. More importantly, other brands will follow.

Translation: Our VC community might start paying more attention to the DC startup companies in social media space.

Not quite sure if Pepsi move is because of the lagging numbers in the Super bowl during the last couple of years or they have truly came to the conclusion that social media advertising is the way to go? They are both linked anyway. To play this safer, perhaps an integrated approach would have been best, with some budget still allocated to the Super bowl, but leveraging a social campaign, which then engaged and spread the brand during and post the event. Regardless, I think this is a great way for Pepsi to start out the New Year.

Let’s discuss their social media strategy move. I checked out Pepsi fan page on facebook. They have about 286,000 fan which they claim the fans are actively engaged. Although, 286,000 sounds like a big number, but not even close compared to Coke’s 4 million plus, So, I hope their $20 million social media Ad campaign will be used on many other channels and not just limited to their facebook page. Because, for a company that spends almost all it’s money on TV ads – it’s a big risk, particularly when you have less than 300,000 fans. That is why I said, perhaps an integrated approach between TV and Social media would have been best.

Hope people in Pepsi in charge of this campaign already have an answer to these questions I am just about to list here. If not, they better start working on it before they run the campaign:

1. What does ‘actively engaged fans’ actually mean? Or what is required to become a fan on facebook?

2. Out of their 286,000 fans, how many of them have done anything more than just click ‘become a fan’? Do these people become fans by finding the brand and adding it because they like it? or does Pepsi have to spend more money on Facebook ads in order to prompt them to become fans from there.

3. With 1 click = fan, does it really equal an “engaged fan”? How was that equated?

4. Does having more fans online equate to winning the game? It needs to be measured in terms of effort from a marketing perspective, objectives, and how useful all those people actually are.

5. Last, Does Pepsi know why 4 million people have become fan of Coke on Facebook?

Based on the limited information I read and learned about their campaign, I am sensing, It’s not just about the fans. The campaign is aimed at users sharing an idea and persisting their ‘friends’ to vote for their particular project, where the projects with the highest number of votes receive funding. Once these users share this information on their social networks – they have created their own personalized Pepsi advertisement on their page. This is very similar campaign I launched when I was with Searchles for our Searchles TV feature. It worked quite well. So, I am sure it will do much better for Pepsi.

I believe this campaign will have great success, not just with the amount of applicants, but down to brand awareness, and to sales. If it is successful which I hope it will be, don’t be surprised others to follow

So, I am guessing this is also good News for our local mobile app companies like PointAbout I recently covered. Their space might be next. If the Pepsi social media Ad campaign flies, the guys in PointAbout better start working on reducing their mobile app making process from 10 minutes to 10 seconds