Would they really spend $20m on social media

A few weeks back Pepsi boldly proclaimed that they wouldn’t be buying a Superbowl ad and would be investing in social media driven campaigns.


“This year for the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have ads in the Super Bowl telecast. No Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake. Pepsi has chosen to give away over $20 million in a social media play it is calling The Pepsi Refresh Project, debuting in 2010. In Super Bowl ads from 1999 to 2009, Pepsi spent over $142 million to encourage consumers to drink the Pepsi brand. Pepsi’s decision to pull its advertising from the Super Bowl telecast and concentrate on its Social Media strategy to try and create a movement will be the largest and most visible showdown between broadcast media and the Internet to date. Pepsi represents one of the stalwarts, not just of the Super Bowl advertiser lineup, but of broadcast TV in general.

Coke and Unilever will be shifting their digital microsite strategy to social communities like Facebook & YouTube.

Prinz Pinakatt, the Coca-Cola Company’s interactive marketing manager for Europe, said, “In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com-hosted site. In most cases these will still exist as it’s the most obvious destination for a consumer, but it might only be a page linking to YouTube encouraging people to join the community there. “We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,” Pinakatt added.

Cheryl Calverley, Unilever UK’s senior global manager for Axe Skin, said, “You’ll see fewer brands creating a site for one campaign and then throwing it away. Certainly we won’t do that at Unilever any more.