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Coca-Cola Tries To Live Positively

January 30, 2010 in Advertising, Cause Marketing, Corporate, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Messages with 0 Comments

Last week, I wrote about Pepsi’s daring decision to sit on the sidelines of this year’s Super Bowl advertising contest in favor of a social media-based cause marketing campaign.

Pepsi’s Refresh Project has been attracting so much media attention that I overlooked Coca-Cola’s own cause campaign, Live Positively.

Coke’s campaign has more modest ambitions. The company will be showcasing two new spots during the Super Bowl, which are also the centerpiece of the cause marketing campaign.

The concept is really quite simple. When Facebook users send a free virtual Coca-Cola gift to their friends through its Live Positively application, Coke gives back in two ways. They donate one dollar to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (up to $250,000). And they give their new “fans” (of which there are now more than 4 million) a sneak peak at their Wieden & Kennedy-created Super Bowl ads.

I give Coke credit for finding a creative way to engage a large audience with its corporate responsibility mantra. While Pepsi’s project appears to be more of a short-term special initiative, the Live Positively message now represents Coke’s overarching sustainability strategy and brand. More than 4 million people and counting are now connected to what could become the company’s permanent good works feed.

Having said that, I was underwhelmed by the ads. Coke has done an incredible job of articulating its “Happiness” brand message through creative visual storytelling. What I wanted for “Live Positively” was something more like this below — real people, real smiles, real pleasure.


And instead, they give us a redemptive tale of Montgomery Burns.

In addition, the campaign’s cause component is too abstract. Coke should have identified a specific project or local initiative to support within The Boys & Girls Clubs of America. I understand there is a long-standing relationship between the two organizations, but general support is just so stale. It doesn’t tell a compelling story of need or urgency.

Pepsi’s campaign is fresher and more groundbreaking. Not only will the company fund specific community building projects, its voting process will be an important teaching tool. People will learn about the vast range of problems that are plaguing communities and be engaged by the creative approaches to solving them.

Local meets global. Education meets engagement. Media meets meaning. Online meets offline. These intersections are the future of cause marketing and Coke needs to catch up.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts

Will Refresh Project Fizzle Out for Pepsi?

January 14, 2010 in Advertising, Cause Marketing, Corporate, Social Marketing, Social Media with 3 Comments

I am intrigued by Pepsi’s bold decision to take their brand off the largest marketing stage of the year and redirect their $20 million Super Bowl advertising budget to a new national cause campaign. Pepsi has always gone big for the Super Bowl — big on creativity and on celebrity. ABC News reports that Pepsi has spent $142 million in Super Bowl ads in the last decade.

It’s rare for a brand as valuable as Pepsi’s to be this bravely experimental, so clearly there is a lot riding on the Pepsi Refresh Project.

If you didn’t catch the announcement, Pepsi is calling on consumers, businesses and nonprofits to submit good ideas and good causes to be funded through the Pepsi Refresh Project. They will accept up to 1,000 good ideas every month and consumers will then vote for their favorite ideas beginning February 1. Pepsi has partnered with some major players in the cause space, GOOD, DoSomething.org, CityYear and Global Giving.

The campaign holds great promise and, if successful, it could usher in a larger movement away from traditional passive, one-off, event-based advertising and toward these kinds of interactive cause campaigns with local focus, global reach and year-long scope.

Saying all that, I am surprised that Pepsi’s foray into social media and cause marketing had some serious missteps from day one. They launched their Web site before it was ready for game time, which led to database errors when users attempted to submit their “ideas that will have a positive impact.” Their Facebook page was immediately populated not with supportive comments, but with frustrated user complaints. Worse still, some users actually had their confidential information — and intellectual property — compromised by the database errors.

Is Pepsi trying to crowdsource or incite a flash mob?

This all raises the issue of trust. Beyond the undeniable buzz it generates, cause marketing through social media is fundamentally about building a relationship of trust between a brand and its audiences.

While a campaign may certainly have noble intentions and make a social impact, it comes up short if it doesn’t establish a lasting bond of trust during the phases of its execution.

We will see how Pepsi’s early miscues color the credibility of their campaign. The submission process was flawed, but let’s hope the voting process runs as advertised.

While the Pepsi Refresh Project has definitely created brand buzz in these early stages, only time will tell if it will inspire true brand trust.
-Matthew diGirolamo, Cause Catalysts

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