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Pepsi Refresh: Success Or Failure?
By: Nicholas Fahrenkopf (Tip This Writer: Send a tip using Paypal to: nf515738[at]albany[dot]edu )
In less than a week the Pepsi Refresh Project will announce the winners of their first round of funding for community projects. Pepsi describes it as a “groundbreaking effort to foster innovation in social good, [that] will award more than $20 million this year to fund great ideas that refresh the world.”
One of the things Pepsi tried to refresh was their ad strategy- opting to focus on this project instead of advertising in the monumental Super Bowl XLIV. With a historic outcome, the game also had a record breaking viewership- and yet Pepsi ended up not getting in front of 106 million sets of eyeballs. Was this a big mistake, or a brilliant move?
“It’s a huge mistake to believe that eyeballs equals success,” says Dr. Amanda Bower, an associate professor of business administrations at Washington and Lee University. “Eyeballs can mean that your failures just have a bigger audience. Consumers are far more in charge of their perception of a message than they are given credit for.”
Dr. Lisa Haverty from Brain on Brand explains: “An ad without strong and lasting brand recall runs the risk of being recalled as the ‘expected’ brand. This memory mishap happens more frequently than advertisers realize and is especially risky at the Super Bowl…Without knowledge of how consumers remember & forget ads, it’s best to stay away from a media buy that could backfire.”
On one hand Pepsi runs the risk of their ads being confused with Coke ads- just like any other beer company could be confused with, or at least compared with the Budweiser frogs- or more recently Clydesdales. But there is more than competing Super Bowl ads- both cola companies have had large presences in the Super Bowl. “They made a conscious decision to be able to redirect those dollars that would be spent at $3 million in a 30 [second spot] for Super Bowl ads [on Refresh Everything]” says Bob Horowitz, President and Executive Producer of Juma Entertainment. Mr. Horowitz was executive producer for CBS’ show “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials” and explained that advertising in the Super Bowl is about a lot more than what happens during the game. “Whether you spend the $3 million for the spot, or don’t spend the $3 million for the spot. Whether you’re an advocacy spot like Focus or whether you’re Doritos or GoDaddy people are talking about it before and after,” he says. “There was a lot written about FedEx not in it or the US auto not in it and I think that buzz before still gains publicity for those companies. Do I think that Pepsi got a lot of ink that they would not normally get? Yes!” Case in point: you’re reading this.
So is it working? Larry Moss has submitted an art project called “Airigami” for consideration for Pepsi Refresh, and chronicles a number of problems from the site going down for applicants, to voting problems, to overall confusion on registering, signing in and navigating the site. “My biggest disappointment is in the way projects are categorized for the purpose of voting. It doesn’t make sense to me that art projects are competing for the same money as humanitarian projects. Voters are actually asked to choose between feeding the homeless and building balloon dinosaurs. That’s not right.” He goes on to say that it’s a great project, that’s been poorly executed so far. “My hope is that the folks at Pepsi have learned from this first month and will be able to improve it over the coming year.” While they’re refreshing how the site works, maybe Pepsi will actually refresh their advertising campaign too- we still see TV ads for Pepsi Refresh. “It’s really hard to have a strategy of ‘refresh everything’ and then advertise in arguably the most stereotypical media vehicle known to man,” continues Professor Bower. “In other words, that placement would be the antithesis of the message.”
In the end, Pepsi took a chance that they could hook consumers through a social media experiment, and through getting attention by not advertising at the Super Bowl. Ron Antonette, a communications professional from Long Beach, CA sums it up with his belief that “the decision proved to be a correct one, as instead of just being part of the pre-Super Bowl round stories, they received their own, separate coverage about the decision. Coke will have greater reach and audience numbers based on the commercial airings, but I’d expect that Pepsi will have a greater return on investment on its campaign.”
It’s a move that can only be used so many times- every other year Pepsi can’t make a big deal about not advertising in the Super Bowl. And make no mistake, as Horowitz explains, they’ll be back: “Anybody that has been associated with the NFL, whether broadcasting it or sponsoring it, whether they take a breather, they always come back to it because the NFL and in this case the Super Bowl is the number one marketing platform- the number one eyeball generator out there.”
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