Report of The February 18

Case Study

TrnThin An 2151942 Pepsi: Can a Soda

V L NguynKhang 2150400 Really Make the
world a Better
HunhTh Thanh Mai 2150373 Place?
on L UynUyn 2150585
Phan Thanh Minh T 2151943
on L UynUyn - 2150585

Lecturer
PhmTng Linh
1. Consider PepsiCos advertising throughout its history. Identify as many commonalities
as possible across its various ad campaigns. How is this campaign consistent with PepsiCos
brand image?

For over 60 years, the Pepsi Cola company or PepsiCo has been one of the most well-
known 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 Guths 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, Inc. and then become the nowadays popular 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 1983s slogan: Pepsi now! Take the challenge!, the 1984 1991s Pepsi. The choice of a
New Generation or 1992s slogan Be Young, Have Fun, Drink Pepsi and Generation Next
during 1997 1998, Taste the one thats forever young in 2006 2008, and also, the recent
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 Pepsis slogan has been adopted into songs to make
them easier to remember and make the musicians respective audience getting known to the
slogan, one could find them very familiar such as Michael Jacksons 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 times 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 Girls Generation Next

Figure 2 a scene from Michael Jacksons 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
Universals 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 formers 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 FourSquares 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
leaders influence, Pepsi has created an innovative campaign that is very bold to not be in a
place where you know youre 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 thats mentioned on the media, but they have also made it something people talk,
discuss about.

3. Describe PepsiCos target audience. Is the Pepsi Refresh campaign consistent with that
audience?
 After going through PepsiCos 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 PepsiCos campaign remain unchanged, this campaign is
geared toward the people who uses the social media more often, but only time will tell if Pepsis
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 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 communications 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 projects
theme was to make contributions for the world. Secondly, after rising consumers 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 competitors 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 brands
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 others 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
brands 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 campaigns 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 peoples 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 cant 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 cant 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 publics 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 Pepsis 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 brands image positively by making the world a better place is
intentionally trying to cover the real drawback of their product by distracting everyones
attention off the real problem. Last but not least is the mismatch between customer and
campaign. There are either those Pepsis 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 brands 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 /

Figure 2

https://www.starwearstatus.com/EXCLUSIVE/michael-jackson-black-and-white-pepsi-
commercial-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-and-
effect-pepsi-is-using-sports-to-drive-refresh-proj.html

References

Elliot, S. (2010, January 31). Pepsi Invites the Public to Do 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 refresh project: A case study. Available at:

https://sites.psu.edu/katie225/2014/07/23/pepsi-refresh-project-a-case-study/ (Accessed: 17
February 2017).
Machine, W. (2001). The history of Pepsi cola. Soda Museum

Michelle, A. (2007). Pepsis challenge in 1940s: Color Barrier. USA Today. Retrieved
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 publics favorite ideas to refresh
the world (2010) Available at: http://www.pepsico.com/live/pressrelease/The-Pepsi-Refresh-
Project-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 Seabrook. Available at:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/snacks-for-a-fat-planet (Accessed: 17
February 2017).