Pepsi Dumps Super Bowl for Social Media

Those who are skeptical about social media’s popularity and ability might put their thinking caps on after reading this post. World’s renowned cola brand Pepsi has astonished the advertising industry by its latest move to ignore Super Bowl this year and instead focus on social media. For those unaware, Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League, and is considered as the most-watched American television broadcast.

Pepsi, in an effort to leverage social media, has opted to award grants of thousands of dollars in its “Pepsi Refresh Project”, which would be rolling out in January, 2010. As social media is all about people and communities, that’s exactly what Pepsi would be focusing on. It would allow people to visit the “Refresh Project” via several social media platforms and suggest ideas on how the brand could refresh their community. The next process involves voting, which would be carried out during February. Finally, the amount of money ($20 million) saved by not advertising through Super Bowl would be diverted to the project in form of prizes.

Advantage Coke?

Would Pepsi abandoning Super Bowls provide an opportunity for Coke to capitalize on the opportunity? Certainly! As we know, the two brands have been arch enemies since a long time and have tried every possible way to flaunt their superiority through comparative advertising. Embracing social media would allow Coke to enter the scene and create a threat to Pepsi. Saying so, if social media clicks for the latter, it would mean we can see a new kind of competition arising between two of the most popular global brands in the modern media.

Mission Social Media – Would it be Successful?

Over the years, consumers have seen Pepsi as a brand associated with celebrities like Britney Spears, Cindy Crawford or Justin Timberlake, thanks to Super Bowl. But with the change in decision to adopt social media and build communities for a cause, could it mark as a milestone for the company in setting up a trend for other players? Will social media prove to be the right decision for Pepsi over Super Bowl? It is difficult to predict! However, one thing that is indeed certain is that if the plan works, the social media fraternity would be taken even more seriously, forcing other brands to consider it as a powerful marketing medium.

About these ads