The Pepsi Refresh Campaign Success and Failure
In the world of large marketing campaigns, there are ideas that can change the course of a business and the community. Pepsi’s Refresh Project is a rare case where the campaign didn’t succeed for the business but greatly benefited the community. This marketing project was intended to help communities by funding their ideas. By “refreshing” these communities, Pepsi’s head of digital, Shiv Singh, intended to drive brand awareness, equity and customer loyalty. So what happened to this campaign?
Refresh or Not to Refresh?
Pepsi Refresh was successful in some ways but considered unsuccessful overall. The project was successful in providing the public with something other than the usual Pepsi products. The overseer of Pepsi’s social media B. Bonin Bough said the most important aspect of the project was to help individuals build communities by supporting their efforts and ideas.
The project was very successful in this way, providing over 400 grants and drawing a lot of attention to the brand with 18 million unique website visitors and 80 million community idea votes. The brand also showed very positive awareness through its positive impact on the community. However, no matter how helpful the project was to the community, it did not help in actual sales. Pepsi suffered a 6 percent decrease in sales compared to the 4.3 percent overall decrease in sales in the carbonated beverage sales. From a purely financial sales aspect, the project was unsuccessful.
Campaign Evaluation?
There are many methods one can use to evaluate a digital marketing campaign. First, what were the goals of the campaign? Some general goals were: the number of likes and shares their blog posts receives, the size of the fan base on social networking websites, mentions of the brand on social media, the number of positive reviews, the campaign’s authenticity with the brand, website visitors from social networks and the number of conversations about the company from social media.
There are financial evaluations that need to be addressed as well such as; the amount invested into the campaign and its ROI (Return of Interest). This is especially important because the amount of sales do not always reflect the numbers generated by social media as was the case for the Pepsi Refresh Campaign.
Now What?
It is a shame that Pepsi needed to abandon such a noble project. Pepsi should be proud that it took the risk to directly support beneficial projects that will have a lasting impact on communities for years to come. Pepsi could attempt to reactivate the project with a new business plan but they have already reformatted the project in the past without success. Even so, I believe they should look into the project again because of its hugely positive impact on the community. We must take into account the overall decrease in sales for carbonated beverage sales during that time as well.