The commercial itself is set in a royal court in what looks to be during the renaissance times. The almighty king is played by Sir Elton John himself and the kindly king seems to be holding a talent contest of some sort. The king files through failure after failure only to find the woman played my Amaro who only wants to present herself before the king for “treasure” (Pepsi) after that she proceeds to sing a dance remix of Aretha Franklin’s smash hit “Respect”

Reportedly, Elton John had this to say about Amaro:

“She oozes personality, you can see it by talking to her. She’s very voluptuous. She’s cheeky and fun.”

The new vending machine will contain a large touch screen from which thirsty travelers can purchase a soda (yes, soda… not pop or soft drink or cola).

But the neat part is the “social” part.  Users will have the option to send and receive gifted sodas at the machine.  Say you want to get your friend back for buying you a mountain dew when you were parched at the concert and you only had credit cards and they only accepted cash (an absolutely plausible scenario).  You can buy them a soda at the digital vending machine.  Just enter their name and mobile phone number as well as a text message and they will receive the message along with a code to redeem their pre-purchased beverage.

You can also record a 10-second video message to send to the lucky recipient.  Pepsi calls these “random acts of refreshment.”  The idea is awesome but work on that tagline part, what do you say PepsiCo?

“Our vision is to use innovative technology to empower consumers and create new ways for them to engage with our brands, their social networks and each other at the point of purchase,” said Mikel Durham, Chief Innovation Officer at PepsiCo Foodservice. “Social Vending extends our consumers’ social networks beyond the confines of their own devices and transforms a static, transaction-oriented experience into something fun and exciting they’ll want to return to, again and again.”

So about that social network part, one omission from the demo video is Facebook and Twitter integration.  If this crucial part is added, this “social vending” idea could really take off.  It sounds like that social network integration may be the next step as Pepsi says, “Further development of the Social Vending System platform is ongoing, and PepsiCo anticipates testing the concept with key strategic partners later this year.”

I would love to be gifted a Mountain Dew and a bag of Cheetos in the future.  Would probably make my day.  How bout you?

Larry D. Woodard, President and CEO of Manhattan ad agency Vigilante writes in an ABC News piece:

Pepsi represents one of the stalwarts, not just of the Super Bowl advertiser lineup, but of broadcast TV in general. In 2006, spending on brand, Pepsi was at about $150 million. Although brand spending has been decreasing in recent years, Pepsi has continued to spend tens of millions on TV. And the Super Bowl annually has the largest audience of any TV show.

As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased. The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company. This holiday season, Toys "R" Us developed a Facebook page that grew at the astounding rate of between 40,000 and 95,000 fans per day after its late November launch.

As the numbers Woodard mentions would indicate, the Super Bowl is always an advertiser’s dream. It costs big bucks, but there are so many eyeballs on those ads, and some people even watch the event just to see the commercials. Pepsi’s move really says something about how far social media has come in the advertising world in such a short time. The fact that the company is breaking such a long-standing tradition in favor of it says a lot.

Of course social media will play its role in the further viewing of the Super Bowl ads themselves. They will no doubt appear on various video sites, and will be shared by countless people on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
 

Related Articles:

> Socializing Advertising

> Pepsi’s Social Media Challenge

> Amazon.com, Pepsi Bank On Free MP3 Music

Caring and Sharing

What if your ad was so engaging, a viewer wanted to share it with a friend? Sure, 9 ads out of 10 aren’t that engaging to most people, but that’s on your creative department. Let’s say for sake of argument, you have accomplished putting together a great ad that viewers actually enjoy. Why not give them an opportunity to easily pass it along.

Harry Gold with ClickZ has a great article suggesting the use of chiclets in your banner ads. Chiclets are the little social icons you often see attached to web content that let people share said content via social networks, bookmarking services, etc.

It’s simply adding a viral marketing touch to an otherwise stationary banner campaign. You’re giving your ad wheels. By adding these chiclets, you’re all of a sudden opening up your ads to all of the major social networks without spending an extra dime.

Blurring the Lines

The challenging part is coming up with an ad that is enticing enough for people to want to share. Gold notes that the lines between social media and online media are blurring, and he’s very right about that. Wouldn’t an effective ad blur the lines as well?

Take a look at this Pepsi ad discussed at ReelSEO. "Banner ads are now no longer just uni-directional, it would seem," says ReelSEO’s Christophor Rick. "A campaign being run by Pepsi called ‘Dear Mr. President’ is allowing people to record a video message straight from an embedded banner on a standard website. Empowering consumers to not only interact with the banner but actually create content and push it back to the advertiser, it’s perhaps one of the more innovative uses of online video advertising today."

Look at Burger King’s recent trading-friends-for-Whoppers campaign. It got shut down by Facebook for violating terms of service, but the creativity was there.

Marketers need to look for ways to push the envelope with their campaigns if they want to stand out. And it is the ads that stand out that are the most successful. The social direction the web is going in caters to all kinds of possibilities. Shouldn’t you be considering giving your ads a social touch?

The results, though, seem a little flat.

Pepsi did accomplish a couple of things: Influential bloggers were intrigued enough to blog about the company, and in an era where conversations are emphasized, a conversation did thus ensue about the Pepsi brand.

Among marketers, though, not young customers like they ultimately want.

The company set off the new initiative with an elaborate stunt to be sure they got the top 25’s attention. At 20-minute intervals a courier delivered a box with an assortment of Pepsi cans. The first two packages contained vintage, empty cans, and the third and final one was packed with a half-dozen full cans in Pepsi’s new packaging. The cans seemed to evoke little in the viewers, who may not have noticed the new “smile” in the logo, but saw very plainly in new media lower case: pepsi.

Pepsi was apparently very serious about the delivery process. One recipient blogs that the courier refused to deliver all three packages at once, and returned to the driveway to wait out the remaining 19 minutes or so as required by the sender.

And finally, a letter that read, “You’re part of a handful of digital and social influencers we’re reaching out to regarding a multiyear, companywide transformation.” The meeting place would be the aforementioned Pepsi Cooler on FriendFeed.

As intriguing as that is (though, unless a vintage can collector, one might feel a little short-changed by the lack of product in the remaining dozen), it’s hard to tell, judging from the comments at FriendFeed, what solid social media advice this meeting of the minds revealed. Much of it seems derailed into questions about why Pepsi chose FriendFeed instead of Twitter, or criticism of Pepsi’s insistence on a closed and moderated-for-profanity format.

The question, as posed: “…how would you, moving forward guide the Pepsi brand in engaging folks like you through social media?”

Interesting question, but it seems like the wrong target. The target, as revealed in the conversation, was the younger generation, which makes more sense. Try to think of one person over 25 who doesn’t have his cola preference already set in stone, who either openly embraced the choice of a new generation or didn’t.

The suggestions from the crowd were disappointingly standard: celebrity endorsements, product placement, sponsorships, community service, be more like Zappos and Dell. One dared to suggest taste was the most important aspect of Pepsi’s brand and stunts like New Coke and Crystal Pepsi were to be avoided. Others echoed with cheers for Diet Pepsi and warnings not to change the formula.

And in this process, very few suggestions about changing the marketing formula surfaced either.

But it’s not an easy question, is it? What would be an aspect of something so perfunctory in our lives as a choice between Pepsi and Coke? It’s not something one goes around thinking about. There are diehard devotees of each brand, but one presumably would be hard pressed to find widespread loyalty such that a customer refuses to accept the competitor’s substitute. (Waiting tables through college, I’d estimate maybe 5 percent of my customers refused to accept Coke if the restaurant had a deal with Pepsi. That’s a generous estimate.)

Social media marketing, in its most basic form, entails getting people to talk about your product or to talk to you about it, but Jason Falls, one of the social media experts tapped for the event, blogged about his own struggle to find a reason to do so.

“I can’t really think of any reason to have a conversation with Pepsi. I can’t think of anything I would do above and beyond what I already do for the brand if I did. I don’t want anything else from Pepsi (although I do dig free stuff) either.”

Aye, that seems to be the trouble lots of people were having. Pepsi, unless you take a vote among your friends about their preference (on the level of choosing between strawberry or blackberry jam—tough one—crunchy peanut butter or smooth—totally crunchy) you just don’t have much of a reason to about or to Pepsi.

That is the job of marketers, though, to present a good reason for Pepsi to enter the conversation—hey, here’s a whole article about it—but it does seem a bit trickier when it comes to a classic, iconic brand like this one. It’s probably more complicated than slapping a new look on your can, though that’s a likely first step.

And Coke. . .Coke has something sort of dark-artsy about them, their ubiquitous logo in every nook and cranny, their irresistible merchandising compelling you to buy a clock for your rec room, a polar bear for your daughter. The Coke brand, like the golden arches, with permanent real estate in the consciousness to the point—there’ve been studies—that people choose a brand over taste.

In Japan I could hardly ever find Pepsi, so that’s part of it, lack of ubiquity—no, lack of omnipresence. Another part is that despite that omnipresence Coke doesn’t come across as gimmicky or flashy in their advertising. They’re kind of existential—30 seconds of a fresh-faced girl having her nose tickled by the carbonation, no words just smiles and chuckles. A flash of red and that famous script at the back of a baseball field. 

But still, nobody really talks about it.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s what I would do:

1.    Functional MRIs (fMRI) until Pepsi finds a logo that evokes equal or greater response than Coke’s. (Don’t know if that’s possible but it’s worth a shot, right?)

2.    Put that symbol everywhere, especially super positive places for youth. Associate it with goodness wherever goodness lives. (In Japan, too)

3.    Grab an application designer, have her make something cool, brand it, get it onto iPhone, Facebook, or wherever apps are welcome.

4.    Think Bud, think BK. Masters of the viral. People actually look forward to Budweiser commercials. They talk about them, too. And then want to watch them again. YouTube can be good for that too.

5.    Forget Ludicrous, or 20th Century endorsements, or silly reproductions of 80’s choice of a new generation. Find a hot Internet celeb, put a tight t-shirt on her. (Yeah, kinda sexist, but it works.) Sponsor a vlogger.

6.    Appoint an official blogger. Not a flak, not a suit. A guy at the bottling plant, an intern, a truck driver. But don’t fake it. That’s worse than nothing.

7.    Create a fictional blogger/vlogger character—an obvious creation, not a sneaky one—something artificially intelligent, somebody cool like Max Headroom used to be, only, you know, from this decade.

8.    Pay it forward with good works and brag about your good works.

9.    Merchandise. Cool merchandise. Stuff people want to put up in their house.

10.    Find a way to be existential, something Tao of Pooh, something—doh!—Tao of Pepsi.

If none of that works, bring back the glass bottles. Aluminum nor plastic will ever take the place of the old fashioned glass bottle. Just not as good.

Dig. Where’s my check?

No pun intended, but Amazon.com and Pepsi will kickoff their big promotion during the Super Bowl.

The promotion also includes other giveaways, in exchange for collecting redeemable points from Pepsi products. Amazon.com said in a statement that CDs, DVDs, electronics, and other items will be available.

Amazon’s push to broaden its music purchasing customer base comes at a time when the four major music labels finally relented on their long-held, unpopular decision to encumber digital music with DRM technology. This limited the ways in which purchasers could use the music they bought.

An unencumbered song serves as Amazon’s best weapon against iTunes. While Apple’s music arrives via download as being compatible with Apple’s hardware only, an Amazon download can be placed on an iPod, Zune, or any other MP3-capable device.

Amazon also took the step of making its music buying process compatible with iTunes and the Windows Media Player. Users of either software product can have their Amazon download automatically added to that product’s music library for easy management.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/amazoncom-pepsi-bank-on-free-mp3-music-2008-01/feed 2 http://www.webpronews.com/google-gets-no-mention-on-top-brands-list-2007-07 http://www.webpronews.com/google-gets-no-mention-on-top-brands-list-2007-07#comments Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:23:56 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=39215 It's somewhat surprising that this is Coca Cola's first number one spot on Harris's "Best Brands" poll, considering the amount of money the company spends on branding and the subsequent associations branding has built in the consumer mind.
]]> It’s somewhat surprising that this is Coca Cola’s first number one spot on Harris’s "Best Brands" poll, considering the amount of money the company spends on branding and the subsequent associations branding has built in the consumer mind.

In recent tests, when consumers didn’t know the brand, they exhibited no preference between Coke and Pepsi. When the brand was known, they overwhelmingly chose Coke.

Harris’s poll reflects that, too, as it there was no list of options given to respondents; the poll appears to have been open response, asking "Which three brands do you consider best."

While Coke landed on top, up from the seventh spot a decade ago, Pepsi was seventh this time, up from the 10th spot – perhaps proof positive that branding works. Then again, with the influx of pharmaceutical ads on television – you know, where there used to be Pepsi and Nike spots – it’s a wonder nobody chose Pfizer or Zoloft.

"Top of mind association with being ‘best’ is a good position for any brand," said Robert Fronk, Senior Vice President, Brand and Strategy Consulting, Harris Interactive.

"For a truly successful brand relationship though, the objective is not just awareness, but to foster the ongoing process and outcome of brand engagement, which requires more custom and sophisticated measures based upon the interaction of the brand and its desired audience."

I think he’s talking about sales.

Four brands have remained on the top ten list for the past ten years: Ford, Sony, Coca Cola, and Pepsi.

A noticeable absentee from the list is Google, which has been chosen the top brand by branding professionals and market experts in various polls over the years. The difference here is that Harris’s poll did not focus on professionals, but rather, over 2100 consumers.

Here are the top ten brands:

1.    Coca Cola
2.    Sony
3.    Toyota
4.    Dell
5.    Ford
6.    Kraft
7.    Pepsi
8.    Microsoft
9.    Apple
10.    Honda

The study was conducted by researchers at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. The researchers copied results from four different search engines: Google, MSN Live Search, Yahoo! and one they developed specifically for the study.

They took those results, combined them to make identical results for four queries: "camping Mexico," "laser removal," "manufactured home," and "techno music." Despite that the results were identical, the study participants picked Yahoo! as the most relevant, with Google and MSN (in third again, it would seem) trailing behind.

The in-house non-branded engine the researchers created did the worst, rated 10 percent below average.

"Given that there was no difference in the results, all of the search engines should have had the exact same score," said Jim Jansen, assistant professor and lead researcher. "Some emotional branding is having an effect here."

The results mirror a study conducted in 2004 that compared participants cola preferences. In that study, brain scans revealed that when participants knew which cola (Coke or Pepsi) they were drinking, the regions of the brain associated with memory and cultural influences were activated, and affected their preferences.

"[T]here are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans that consume the drinks," the researchers concluded.

They also found that, when brands were known, Coke was cola of choice, trouncing Pepsi, whose brand had no influence. 

Of course, this only counts if you consider Google a media company, and not a technology company. As John explains, while Google may not consider itself a media company, since 98% of its revenues are media revenues, in the eyes of Wall Street, that is exactly what it is. As Mark Felt famously said, “Follow the money”.

GOOG, currently at $293.12, has a market cap of $81.42 billion. Companies Google has passed in the last few months include News Corportation (36.5), Viacom ($50.2 billion), Yahoo (52.28), Kraft (54.64), Disney (55.71), Oracle (64.73), Nokia (75.73), Time Warner (78.25), UPS (81.34). Of course, Microsoft is still far ahead with $275.62 billion. Some other companies bigger than Google include Home Depot (85.85), Pepsi (93.61), Verizon (96.97), Dell (97.79), Berkshire Hathaway (105.66), Coca-Cola (106.21), IBM (121.06), JP Morgan (124.84), Toyota (130.43), Procter & Gamble (138.31), Intel (165.81), Wal-Mart (199.73) and Citigroup (247.94).

Reader Comments…

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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The format allows music lovers to download short clips, updated weekly and monthly, of exclusive performances, lifestyle insights, and interviews of popular performers. Smash on Yahoo! Music marks the first full time TV-to-Web transition.

Featured artists include Coldplay, Kanye West, and Gwen Stefani.

The program is not without original ideas. In a feature called “100 Conerts/100 Days,” Pepsi and Yahoo! will send two music fans around the country to see (surprise) 100 concerts in 100 days. Daily video, photos, and diary accounts from the two fans will be available for download.

This one should be interesting. “Cover Art,” another Smash feature, includes popular bands performing their favorite covers. Country music’s Big and Rich offer up a unique rendition of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”

For rap fans, “Mic Pass” could be a crowd pleaser. Visiting a new city every month, rappers straight from “da street” will be testing their skills for online artists.

Smash on Yahoo! Music will also offer up a music news segment, creatively titled “News Smash,” to keep fans updated with breaking developments in music and pop culture.

Dave Goldberg, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Music seemed excited about the partnership.

“Together we will expand the scope of the music programming experience and leverage Yahoo’s broad reach to bring quality original content to the voracious audience of music fans on the Internet and beyond,” he said.

Dave Burwick, senior vice president and CMO,Pepsi-Cola NorthAmerica, cooed a little more about it.

“Yahoo! possesses a credibility in the music industry and among teens that is invaluable and we’re looking forward to working with them to bring fans this exclusive music content.”

The Daves are hoping for a better ROI than the original WB broadcast provided. During the first two runs of the show last summer, it returned a disappointing 1.8 million and 1.3 million viewers respectively.