ASSGINGNEMNT ON: Pepsi: Can a

Soda Really Make the World a Better

Place?

SUBMITTED TO
MD. MONIRUZZAMAN
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

SUBMITTED BY
MAHABUBA SULTANA
ROLL: 3934
BATCH: 56/D
 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?

Some of the earlier slogans have the commonality that you get more for
the same price, that when you buy Pepsi you get more of flavor, amount
and/or whatever then the competition offers.

Pepsi is for everyone and that can Pepsi alone refresh or change the
world. Many slogans have to deal with being young as well as being in
the future. Most of the slogans indicate that if you want to be part of the
future or new generation that you have to drink Pepsi.

For example, their current 2012 slogan is" The Best Drink Created
Worldwide."Their latest campaign, called Pepsi Refresh,calls upon the
masses to converge through philanthropy by utilizing alternative means
i.e.social media and social responsibility.

How is this campaign consistent with Pepsico's brand image? 

It is consistent with Pepsico's brand image because they target the
younger nation and making it a better place for many generations to
come.

They started to advertise by reinvesting into the actual community to

actually make the future better and also keep up with the theme of
many of their advertisement effort.
Pepsi always had new idea on their advertisement to get consumer
attention.
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 advertising 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 ads on the main network and other cable
channel, not to mention the partnership between the SLIP magazine and
with their heavier use of 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.

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 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. 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 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. 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 applying. “Every bottle of milk is a brick for a new school” is their
slogan. By 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 “empowering” 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 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 rival- Coca. 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. The 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 for 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.