Pepsi Refresh Project Case Study

Report of The Case Study Tr ầnThiên An – 2151942 Võ Lê NguyênKhang – 2150400 Hu ỳ nhTh nhTh ị Thanh Mai – 2150373

Đoàn Lê UyênUyên –  2150585 Phan Thanh Minh Tú – 2151943

Đoàn Lê UyênUyên - 2150585

Lecturer PhạmTườ ng ng Linh

February 18

Pepsi: Can a Soda Really Make the world a Better Place?

1. Consider PepsiCo’s  advertising throughout its history. Identify as many commonalities as possible across its various ad campaigns. How is this campaign consistent with PepsiCo’s brand image?

For over 60 years, the Pepsi  –  Cola   Cola company or PepsiCo has been one of the most wellknown company worldwide thank to its famous beverage: Pepsi. Developed in 1880s by Caleb

Bradman, the drink quickly developed popularity and the “Pepsi-Cola” company was officially registered in 1902. However, the company went bankrupt in 1931 and was bought alongside the formula for the drink by Charles Guth in June of the same year. After a law suit between Guth

and his fellow stakeholder, Pepsico was absorbed into Guth’s  company: the Loft, Incoporated, which was re-branded to Pepsi-Cola Company in 1941, and in 1965, the company decided to merge with Frito-Lay, Frito-Lay, Inc. and then become be come the nowadays popular Pepsico, Pepsico , Inc. Within the last 20 years, Pepsi has introduced an astounding advertising campaign, with many slogans being used, a clear view can be seen that with cheerful, repeated words about the

“next generation” and the encouraging sentence that ties with youthful activities, starting with the 1983’s slogan: “Pepsi now! Take the challenge!”, the 1984 – 1991’s – 1991’s “Pepsi. The choice of a  New Generation” or o r 1992’s slogan “Be Young, Young, Have Fun, Drink Pepsi” and a nd “Generation Next” Nex t”  –  1998, “Taste the one that’s forever young” in 2006 –   2008, and also, the recent during 1997  – 1998, “Change the game” in 2012. With its various slogans used in the campaign, Pepsi also employs many celebrities to help promoting its soft drink such as famous musician Michael Jackson, the American rock band Van Halen or the English pop group Spice girl and even athlete such as David Beckham and Lionel Messi and even more. Also with the participation of musicians like

Michael Jackson and Spice Girls, many of Pepsi’s slogan has been adopted into songs to make them easier to remember and make the musician’s respective audience getting known to the slogan, one could find them very familiar such as Michael Jackson’s version of “Pepsi. The Choice of a New Generation”. By having celebrities participating in its campaign, Pepsi identifies itself as a young, innovative soft drink brand by having different artist or even athlete to be their brand face so that when the time changed, their slogan and presenting face would

change to match the respective time’s audience preferences, and looking at how they have accomplished so far, Pepsi have tried to predict and give out decisions that makes their campaign stay close to the new generation, by having the key opinion leader of the given time to help

advertising the product, the company selects celebrities who are considered famous among the

“New Generation” to keep refreshing their campaign but still stay close to their first and foremost objective: to sell their soft drink

 Figure 1 Poster of Spice Spice Girl’s “Genera “Generation tion Next”

 Figure 2 a scene from Michael Jackson’s “Pepsi. The choice of a new Generation” 2. List all the promotional mix elements used in the Pepsi Refresh campaign. What grade would you give PepsiCo on integrating these elements into an integration marketing communication campaign?

By using the broadcast media as the main channel to promote the Pepsi Refresh campaign, Pepsi integrate advertising and public relationship with each other, as we can see that by having not only aired advertisement on the main cable network, 30 other different cable channels are also used to promote their campaign. But Pepsi does not stop there, as they use traditional press and also the newly developed social media too, however unlike other promotion campaign, the director of digital and social media of PepsiCo stated that the digital network is infused in their campaign, having them highlighting project that has been funded previously. Also with the NBC

Universal’s daily news program “Today” show, spreading the refresheverything.com with Facebook and Twitter, and even partnering with the music magazine SPIN, the South concert of Southwest, Pepsi decided to have as many people spreading the word about their campaign as

 possible, and thus not only making the campaign “something people talk about, more of a social conversation”, according to Jean-Paul Colaco, the senior vice president of Hulu. And also, with the employment of many celebrities within the campaign, such as American actor Kevin Bacon, Director Demi Moore, NASCAR racer Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Gordon, has applied for grants for organizations like the American Cancer Society, Girls Education and Mentoring Service,

Pepsi aim for the former’s fan and supporter to get to know or support the campaign. Also by  partnering with FourSquare, Pepsi are giving out offer to actually have people meeting by

utilizing FourSquare’s GPS at its retailer, and giving out offers as incentive for them to visit. In conclusion, throughout the Pepsi Refresh campaign, Pepsi has used an advertising heavy campaign coupled with public relationship wisely, having the traditional media to spread the words but also utilize the interpersonal communication of the social network and the key opinion

leader’s influence, Pepsi has created an innovative campaign that is “very bold to not be in a  place where you know you’re going to have an audience”, according to Marc Lucas, an advertising executive. With such a grand scale campaign like this, Pepsi has truly made advertising and public relationship to work in harmony: not only they make the campaign

something that’s mentioned on the  media, but they have also made it something people talk, discuss about. 3. Describe PepsiCo’s  target audience. Is the Pepsi Refresh campaign consistent with that audience?

After going through PepsiCo’s recent adver tising tising campaign, we can see that they target a large segment of the youth, ranging from sport loving character or people who are particularly fond of dedicated music like rock, people who prefer to go with the flow and have the passion with car racing or even movie lover, ones that like to read magazine or people who prefer getting to know more around themselves by watching TV. And yet, the newly introduced Pepsi Refresh campaign are following its predecessor with quite a unique way, by not participating in the Super Bowl, Pepsi actually loses a part of their target audience which is the American football lover, which is quite a big risk as the Super Bowl is broadcast on every national American television and radio network, this time however, they focus more on the “stay at home” segment of the  bunch, by increasing their th eir ads on the main network n etwork and an d other oth er cable channel, not to mention the  partnership between the SLIP S LIP magazine and with their heavier use of o f the social media, this could mean that while the overall target of PepsiCo’s campaign remain unchanged, this campaign is

geared toward the people who uses the social media more often, but only time will tell if Pepsi’s  bold move will bear the fruit to success or not.

 Figure 3 Super Bowl 2012, the event that Pepsi miss to innovate its campaign 4. As completely as possible, analyze the campaign according to the steps listed in the chapter for developing effective marketing communication.

The first step is to identify the target audience, in other words is to find out the potential  buyers. In this case as describe above, the project was aiming to the young generation, which from the age of 14 to 29. They want to attract and convince young consumers to purchase their

 products. That is to say, recruiting celebrities may be partial p artial within their brand as Demi Moore,  NFL players Mark Sanchez, Drew Breesand some NASCAR veterans Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Eaarnhardt Jr., were attractive enough to bring attention to their target customer, the youth.

 Figure 4 Celebrities are waiting for you to vote Determining the communication’s objectives is the next step. Come first in the list is initially suceeded to inform their target audience the message they want to transfer. By rising customer awareness upon the project, they wanted customer to be well- perceived upon their  project’s theme was to make contributions for the world. Secondly, after rising consumer’s awareness, the campaign aimed to making consumer acknowledged about the product. Of course, they may want consumer to be acknowledged enough to prefer their product over competitor’s products. As the result, the most significant and fundamental objective is to make sure consumer would  purchase their product. The third step is designing a message. The original purpose of this particular project was to

transfer positive message from PepsiCo in returning enhancing and building up steadily brand’s

image to everyone. In other words, their intention from the start was to stir up positive emotions in which throughout that stimulated purchase from the customer. To this end, it is no doubt to assert the message content is emotional appeal. This is what exactly Dutch Lady- a famous milk  brand is a pplying. “Every bottle of milk is a brick for a new school” is their slogan. B y stiring up emotional appeal within people toward the poor, people might have a tendency to choose Dutch

Lady over other’s brand like True Milk, Vinamilk,… PepsiCo is clever enough to do nothing but sharing a general positive message and “empower ing ing” the voters to make decisions for themselves. This is the first type of choosing message content: Leave the conclusion to the audience. This particular method not only efficiently caused voters to have a feeling of taking over the game and being associated to but also felt explicitly and perceived how pivotal their votes were. The next step is to choose media. PepsiCo was taking risk by fully communicating throughout social media in which messages are carried. That is to say the main channel they used is nonpersonal communication channel as it took no direct communication. The message was transferred through media newspaper, magazines, television, internet, etc. The reason why they chose Nonpersonal channel can be understood easily. The target audience they aimed to is young generation who is most easily to get access to the Internet. Choosing message source is the next step. Whether PepsiCo choose personal or nonpersonal communication, the communicator was the one inflicts significant impact on target audience. Drew Brees is an American football quarterback. He is the MVP of the Super Bowl XLIV, the Offensive player of the year in 2008 and 2011. PepsiCo surely knew how to get celebrity to be their ambassador. Surely having one of the most famous football player at that time stood for

 brand’s image right into the time of Super Bowl is a brilliant b rilliant idea, not to mention he is a perfect image aiming to Pepsi Refresh Project's target audience. Last but not least is collecting feedback. The case study firmly reflects this campaign collected feedbacks via Facebook, Twitter and many others web sites online, in other word, through social media to analyze current popularity. 5. Will the Pepsi Refresh campaign be successful? Why or why not?

After launching this particular campaign- Pepsi Refresh Project, it had triggered a colossally  buzzing topic among people as this number-two soft drink brand became the hottest topic to talk about during the Super Bowl, but it was nonetheless their ads were absent. The entire America first time in 23 years straight has not watched Pepsi ads during Super Bowl. 37% of American at that time had been taken attention by the Pepsi which is by far at the peak of the campaign(Katie, 2014). Through social media, they also conducted the campaign on Facebook, Twitter, etc. which is successfully got back more than 140.000 Tweets, over 3 billion audience impressions in only 8 months and 600% increasing on Facebook likes(Katie, 2014). Not to mention over 18 million of visitor to the main website of this campaign, Refresheverything.com in the first 11 months(Katie, 2014). That is to say to a marketing campaign advertisement, satisfactory upon this is out the chart. It is undisputedly to proclaim Pepsi had effected significantly on social responsibility by encouraging their target audience to contribute for community. In fact, from January to May of the next year, 12000 projects had been successfully funded with more than 76 million of votes

from all the projects which had been wholly listed publicly on the campaign’s web site(Katie, 2014). To this end, they not only successfully enhanced their image toward community but also  built up the brand to people. In the end, they did completely succeed in engraving extremely

 positive image into people’s mind. Furthermore, Reresheverything.com also greatly communicated to voters. In fact, Pepsi is one of the pioneers by using social media to interact to consumers which many companies these days have applied this revolutionary interaction, not to mention have done that successfully. The startlingly uprising statistics may deceive everyone easily but it really not what it seems to be. During the launching of campaign, Pepsi have been already one step behind their rivalCoca. In fact, they have been chased up and surpassed that pushed them down to third place of  beverage in the world behind Coke and Diet Coke, which has never happened before in the history of extreme competition between Pepsi and Cola. In other words, the whole campaign with extremely successfully marketing advertisement and its revolutionary idea of social media interaction as well as its positive image on people did not generate consumption of their product at all. In 2010, the sales of blue-can Pepsi were sold had been descended heavily by 4,8 percent in comparison with the previous year(Seabrook et al., 2015). During that time, Coca- Cola and

Diet Coke sales plummeted modestly by 0,5% and 1% (Bauerlein, 2011). Also in that time, it is reported that both Pepsi- Cola and Diet Pepsi each declined by 5% of market share in comparison with the previous year which meant the acceleration of their market share descending is 8 time higher than past year(Seabrook et al., 2015). Moreover, PepsiCo also had lost 2,6% in total of carbonated drink market (Seabrook et al., 2015). The whole campaign was a total failure in product consumption on Pepsi, but it was nonetheless undoubtedly successful in many aspects. Apparently beside significant successes were recorded on social media, its main

objective can’t be fulfilled. The whole campaign is initially a gamble as no one before has done that. Simply analyzing

data may end up confusing as it can’t be hold properly that that. Th e first reason is Pepsi Refresh  project has initially mistaken from the first move as they attract a wide range of organization such as Atlas Corps, Washington, APO Mu Alpha Alumni, Military Connections Corporation, etc.(The Pepsi refresh project awards $1.3 Million to support the public’s favorite ideas to refresh the world, 2010) instead of their original target audience, the youth. To this end, the campaign lost their concentration on how they were working. Plus, it was really hard for ordinary one to ensure how the money was invested to. The second reason is the paradox of how

the true essence of Pepsi’s product is not healthy due to high level of sugar and energy, such as Mountain Dew, Dorito, Lays,… even its main product f or or the campaign. It is undisputed to assert that the effort to enhance brand’s image positively by making the world a better place is intentionally trying to cover the real drawback of their product by distracting everyone’s attention off the real problem. Last but not least is the mismatch between customer and

campaign. There are either those Pepsi’s fans who willing to purchase but were not much interested in the campaign or those were not their fan but really fascinated by the campaign. But the main reason was correlation between the campaign and Pepsi product is mismatch which resulted in giving no incentive to people enough to purchase. In other words, the connection  between the campaign and its product is weak. It is very hard to claim whether this campaign is a failure or a success due to its controversy on both positive and negative aspect. One thing is for sure is an extremely brilliant idea as it aimed to positive objective initially. It has succeed in spreading widely positive manner to the young generation as well as building better brand’s image in effort of selling product.

Unfortunately, the project was also a total failure on product consumption aspect which resulted in the end of the project in within 2 years. In the end, sale is the most pivotal factor to criticize one is successful or not. I personally think this is a failure project but worth applying in near future. Visual references Figure 1 http://gagacxspice.online.fr/spicegirlsmerchandises/pepsi.htm http://gagacxspice.online.fr/spicegirlsmerchandis es/pepsi.htm / Figure 2 https://www.starwearstatus.com/EXCLUSIVE/michael-jackson-black-and-white-pepsicommercial-zipper-leather-jacket-by-j-park/ Figure 3 http://www.jotopr.com/joto-bowl-the-pr-take-on-the-2012-super-bowl-commercials/ Figure 4 http://www.nysportsjournalism.com/qa-is-pepsi-project-scoring-61/2010/6/17/cause-andeffect-pepsi-is-using-sports-to-drive-refresh-proj.html

References

Elliot, S. (2010, January 31). Pepsi Invites the Public to Do Good. Good . The New York Times. Retrieved April 14, 2013 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/business/media/01adco.html?_r=0 Bauerlein,V. (2011) PepsiCo chief defends her strategy to promote ‘good for you’ foods . Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303627104576412232408827462 (Accessed: 17 February 2017). Katie (2014) Pepsi (2014) Pepsi refresh project: A case study. study. https://sites.psu.edu/katie225/2014/07/23/pepsi-refresh-project-a-case-study/ February 2017).

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Machine, W. (2001). The history of Pepsi Pe psi cola. Soda Museum

Michelle, A. (2007). Pepsi’s challenge in 1940s: Color Barrier. USA Today. Retrieved fromhttp://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2007-01-22-pepsi-book_x.htm fromhttp://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2007-01-22-pepsi-book_x.htm

The Pepsi refresh project awards $1.3 Million to support the public’s favorite ideas to refresh the world (2010) world (2010) Available at: http://www.pepsico.com/live/pressrelease/The-Pepsi-Refres http://www.pepsico.com/live/pressrelease/The-Pepsi-RefreshhProject-Awards-13-Million-to-Support-the-Publics-Favorite-Idea03222010) Seabrook, J., Gallo, R., Blitzer, J., Gupta, B., Rao, M., Lizza, R., Cassidy, J., Gonnerman, J., Roberson, B. and Gopnik, A. (2015) John (2015) John Seabrook . Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/snacks-for-a-fat-planet (Accessed: 17 February 2017).