Zoë Kelly
The Pepsi Refresh Project: A Thirst for Change Case
Background
PepsiCo created a national campaign to create a competition to support grant ideas for a cause
marketing program to “refresh” communities. The competition had tremendous participation but
little sales increase. Now PepsiCo has to decide if it was beneficial to continue the Pepsi Refresh
Project and if so, how to execute the strategy to drive project success into greater sales growth.
Recommendation
I have a three-part recommendation for PepsiCo’s campaign. My basis for my recommendation
revolves around Pepsi relaunching the Pepsi Refresh Project. First, Pepsi should make strong
connections with social media influencers and collect grant ideas from them while adhering to
their enormous following. Next Pepsi should create bonus opportunities through the voting
process for voters to win Pepsi coupons randomly to encourage sales. Lastly, Pepsi should follow
through with the “power voting” under the bottle caps.
Basis for Recommendation
Influencer Marketing Programs. Pepsi should join forces for this next launch of Pepsi Refresh
Project by sponsoring various social media influencers and creating a competition based on their
grant ideas. By pairing with these social media influencers it reaches to a wide audience,
especially to the millennials and generation Z generations, a target audience they want to further
impact. Social media is also a big outlet for philanthropy because the content can easily be
shared across many platforms. It would make the voting process relatively easy for voters
because the influencers can easily link up the voting website to make it into a one click process.
Utilizing Coupons to Drive Sales. Within the voting process for the Pepsi Refresh Project, Pepsi
should make voters create an account when they go on the website to vote for the first time. This
allows Pepsi to have a bigger communication base that they can send advertisements to in the
future. Pepsi should then create an algorithm to randomly select coupon winners when they sign