The Failure of Pepsi Refreshment Project

Pepsi CO launched a program called Pepsi refreshment project in the year 2010 this was a social media encouraged community development project. In this project Pepsi CO asked the public to share their new thoughts and ideas for the developing the society and the winners were offered grants ranging from $5000 to $25000 this encouraged lots of people to participate in the contest organized by the Pepsi.

The major focus of the Pepsi refreshment project were

• Health cause
• Environmental cause
• Social cause
• Educational cause
• Cultural cause Social media marketing.

For the first time Pepsi CO avoided its super bowl ad campaign strategy and shifted its focus to social media advertising. The main reason for the Pepsi refreshment project was to improve the sales of the pepsi soft drinks and increase its sales more than its competitors in the market. Pepsi has diverted its investment of 20 million dollars from conventional marketing to the social media marketing to attract the larger section of the society. Because that was time where social media was turning into most popular and great influencer on the society so the pepsi wanted to grab this opportunity and improve the sales.

As expected this project got the great response from the society. People started sharing their thoughts and ideas on various social media platforms like Facebook, twitter and so on not only these people also E-mailed to the company.

Pepsi refreshment project only lasted for 2 years because after the second year the project failed in increasing the ranking of Pepsi in the market instead Pepsi sales fell and ranking went down and this project could not serve the major purpose but this earned a great reputation for the company among the society. People started considering Pepsi as one of the most innovative marketing strategy creation brand.

One of the major reasons for this project failure is it got lot of criticism from the people saying that this project was only existing to increase the sales of the product but not for society development and also it faced another critisim that it was not considering peoples e-mails and messages in social media, But the business analysts all around the globe considered this as great initiative and a courageous move from the Pepsi and considered this model as first of its kind Managing Director of pepsi states that “We quantified our outcomes by the level of commitment between the brand and our purchasers, Also, by these measures, we are more than fulfilled, " a Pepsi representative said. "Our value inquire about on Pepsi Refresh Project demonstrated that customers felt Pepsi was a brand that thinks about the network and that the program was a solid fit with their impression of Pepsi as a ground breaking, imaginative brand. We saw that buyers that thought about the Pepsi Refresh Project while picking a cola picked Pepsi.

Also, inquire about demonstrates that the interpersonal organization that we created incorporates the biggest connected with fan base of any drink organization dynamic today Is the Pepsi right brand The cause marketing was done by many other big brands earlier but the situation is not same with pepsi because the product which it sales and the cause pepsi took up were two contradictory things the reason pepsi is the soft drink with no nutrition values in it and with lots of sugar content in it. Which is damaging peoples health and contributing funds to safeguard peoples health.

According to me Pepsi was the right brand for cause marketing due to some reasons like it is responsibility of a big brand like pepsi to contribute to causes in society. Because the companies also have to take up the social responsibility. And the other reason is brands like Pepsi have good supply chain network and a proper medium to reach the customers this connection with customers can be used for good causes like this.