Pepsi opts out, Doritos opts in both use Social Marketing,Forums et al

Pepsi decided to spend their cash this year on a project called the Pepsi Refresh Project. You check it out here

It’s pretty simple. Folks submit ideas of great causes and Pepsi sends them cash. Uh duh. Real innovative right?  Not really but for a major brand it is and here’s why. They are pulling their customers into the equation in real time and not relying on the guys in the ivory tower and focus groups to feed them info about worthy causes. The plus will be that they get data on the demographics of their customers. Next, every idea accepted will cause rave reviews and a life long choice of Pepsi over Coke. The customers will have a feeling of participation in the company. It becomes their company, their drink, and that feels good. Finally, Pepsi will be able to tap into the wisdom of the crowd as to what they need to do for a better drink experience. I’ll follow this closely but let’s see a yellow page ad or T.V. spot do any of the things I just mentioned.

Now to Doritos, they opted in to spend approximately the same amount as Pepsi during the Superbowl and the way they did it was set up a contest online called the “Crashers” and had six winners with the top one taking home 600K.  The way it worked was for people to send in their ideas for commercials and then wait and see if it made it to the Bowl. Well, not a bad approach but personally the ideas chosen were done by corporate. In other words still old school of top down and not bottom up. I thought the ideas were O.K. and that’s about it. Maybe I didn’t read the rules and regulations but it seemed all ideas had to have an edge of violence to them.  Not really my cup of tea but to each his own. Anyway, two different approaches of engaging a customer base. You can take a look at the winners here

I would love to hear comments about the two approaches and happy branding, networking, marketing and innovating.  I would especially be interested in hearing how you could implement these approaches in your business.

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