Pepsi Flexes its Digital Muscles For Michael Jackson
Posted on 26 June 2009 | Comments Off
From the grave the King of Pop still sells soda.
In a nod to Pepsi campaigns from my childhood, the soda pop brand’s agency OMD is using Smart Versioning technology from Eyeblaster to dynamically update its current online campaigns to honor Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Even its digital billboard in Manhattan’s Times Square features gloved one as well.
Banner preview running in Canada
New President, New Channels, New Pepsi
Posted on 26 April 2009 | No responses
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.”
http://creativezone.eyeblaster.com/#ItemName=Pepsi%20-%20Dear%20Mr%20President%20
Wake up and Smile
Posted on 17 April 2009 | No responses
Having neglected my personal website for going on 5 years, I decided to get 1 thing accomplished this week for myself and install some blog software to make it easier to update my musing to the world. You see, my kids are on spring break this week and for some inexplicable reason I gave the babysitter the entire week off. This week is also poorly timed as I am crazy busy at work, the kind of busy where you just cannot get ahead enough to take a week off. And my boss is in the states for the first time since December. This means I have spent the last 7 days chasing kids, answering emails, pulling porcupine quills from a dog’s nose and popping into work.
After all these years I did manage to figure out the login and password for my server and uploaded Wordpress some time after midnight last night. Being more of a talker than a techie I was not surprised when I could not get my email to work this morning. I suddenly remembered why it had been so long between website updates… I don’t really know what I am doing and always manage to break what’s working in the attempt of fixing what is not. So when I noticed my site was down along with my email, I shit. I immediately assumed that I screwed something up and my punishment was no email.
Well it turns out it had nothing to do with my forays into SQL. A support email sent from another account solved that problem 8 hours later. I spent the resulting emailless day at the Bronx Zoo with my kids. This is a lesson for me not to panic and enjoy the important things in life. It also reminded me of this classic SNL skit about relying too heavily on technology. Enjoy.
Hello!
Posted on 17 April 2009 | No responses
Ah…. cobbler’s kids are being sized for new shoes.