This semester I took intro to advertising. I really enjoyed this class. During this course was the Super Bowl. As you may know, the Super Bowl is not only a competition between two football teams but between all the advertisers. My advertising class intensely studied all the commercials and the public’s feedback towards the commercials. There was one company we even analyzed that did not have a Super Bowl add. Pepsi, known for their past Super Bowl adds, decided to step back during the Super Bowl this year. They tried another approach.
Pepsi took their Super Bowl add budget and put it towards their new “Pepsi Refresh Project.” The big idea behind the Refresh Project is that they are asking people what their big idea is and then Pepsi wants to fund the idea. Pepsi divides the ideas into six ideas.
- Health
- Arts & Culture
- Food & Shelter
- The Planets
- Neighborhoods
- Education
When you go to the website you can pick a category and then vote for what idea you think is best. Whichever idea earns the most votes, Pepsi will fund the idea. For example,I voted for an idea in the neighborhood section. My favorite idea was to give children in shelter a real birthday party. I thought that was a good idea because my birthday parties were the highlights of my childhood. I would hate for a child to never know the feeling of a real birthday party.
Pepsi has funded many projects already. Pepsi donated $250,000 to fund research on Spinal Muscular Atophy. The website shows pictures of children whose lives have already been effected by Pepsi’s donation.
I feel like this is a very refreshing approach to PR. My favorite part about the Refresh Project is that they ask people of the community how to help their community. Personally, I have tons of ideas for my little community of Statesboro, GA. I will definitely be speaking to Pepsi about my ideas. I hope you do too.
Submit, Promote, Vote
This is a really good blog post. I think it was a great idea for Pepsi to skip the Super Bowl and do this. If you think about it, no one really remembers the Super Bowl commercials from almost three months ago. People will laugh about the commercials and then talk about them for a week but then they will be over before you know. I have been hearing about this idea from Pepsi for a little while now especially when flipping through the channels. This helps Pepsi with their PR because they are giving back to the community and they are still getting their name out there for people to buy their product. Their PR department got this one right.
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