New President, New Channels, New Pepsi

His mastery of social media played no small part in the historic election of Barack Obama. Like no candidate before him he harnessed technology to connect and coalesce key audiences into a political, social groundswell that soundly defeated John McCain. Among these key audience energized on the pages of Facebook and 140 character tweets were young and first time voters.

Sixty-Eight percent of voters ages 18 to 29 cast their ballots for Obama, versus 30 percent for McCain. That is by far the greatest share of the youth vote that any presidential candidate has received since exit polls began reporting results by age categories, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University. Enter Pepsi and its “Refresh Everything” brand campaign. With its newly designed logo in hand the soda company points its long board toward the tsunami that is the Obama revolution. And like Obama, Pepsi has chosen the same communication channels to engage the elusive 18-29 demo in an open letter to the new president via its “Dear Mr. President” campaign. The result was a direct line to the Oval Office.

“We now want to engage consumers at a deeper level,” said Ana Maria Irazabal, Marketing Director, Pepsi, to ClickZ at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s online video conference in New York City. “What’s more, Pepsi aimed for a better way to reach Millennials, or people ages 14 to 29, instead of solely relying on traditional media such as television.”

Pepsi’s advertising agency R/GA created innovative Eyeblaster-powered banner ads that invited people with webcams to record their message right from the banner. The best videos were featured on a branded YouTube channel and refresheverything.com. The banner helped gather over 700 total video submissions that generated 4 million views and 100,000 text submissions. Millions more were exposed to campaign by the heavy press coverage of the campaign which included over 700 blog postings.

Dawn Winchester, EVP, Chief Marketing Services Officer, R/GA- “In developing a digital strategy for Pepsi R/GA started with the fundamentals of the brand. Pepsi has always been at its best when it is an active participant in the culture, particularly when our culture is being renewed and refreshed. There is no bigger or better example of a cultural shift than the arrival of a new President. Dear Mr. President campaign helps people get closer to, and participate in the cultural phenomenon of our time.

Rather than a campaign that just talks about how our culture is currently being refreshed, R/GA decided to use digital to “walk the walk.” The online ads allow direct text and video responses. It is the first time people can record their views in an ad banner and after submitting the recordings, videos can be viewed, rated, sent to a friend and commented on www.youtube.com/refresheverything which serves as the hub of the campaign.” 

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