Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Advertising’s leitmotif of the late 00’s and into the 2010s appears to be the not-so-slow shift of ad $$ from ATL to Online and, eventually, Social Marketing. The effects are already tangible, with newspapers closing down, large scale events losing funding and the current of placing content behind the pay wall.

Now Pepsi is making a splash with its Refresh Project: USD 20m, originally pencilled into the budget under “Super Bowl” will be spent on a CSR initiative with a strong Social Marketing drift.

I love the elegance and simplicity of the site and especially the way Pepsi sets down the ground rules for what appears to be a no-nonse grant project, without coming across all German and bureaucratic.

Mashable worries that, commendable as it may be, this “campaign” might not be as (cost-)effective as the next escalation in the Pepsi/Coke Super Bowl ad face-off: “the company could wind up spending $20 million on philanthropic causes (which is to be commended), without getting the benefits of a buzz-generating ad campaign.” But by taking the funding for Refresh from a supercharged American cultural and advertising icon such as the Super Bowl, Pepsi made sure to leverage the secret weapon of Social Marketing: earned media. Mashable’s qualms only add to the free media buzz.

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