Pepsi’s Bet on Community Projects Over the Super Bowl. That is the bet that PepsiCo made when it walked away from spending $20 million on television spots for Pepsi during last year’s Super Bowl and plowed the money into a monthly online contest for people to submit their ideas and compete for votes to win grants. Withdrawing from the Super Bowl for the first time in 23 years and giving the money away for the Pepsi Refresh Project was considered a gamble by the beverage maker as it explored the potential of social media and cause-related marketing to make a difference in its business. But the company, despite accusations that some winners used questionable voting tactics, says it was a huge success and plans to expand it beyond the United States this year. More than $20 million in grants, ranging from $5,000 to $250,000, has been distributed to about 400 winners so far, including $25,000 for new uniforms for the Cedar Park High School band in Cedar Park, Tex., which took its campaign to win votes to Friday night football games.
B. Mr. In Social Media, Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail. InShare567 I’ve received many inbound requests for comments based on a report from Gartner, an IT analyst firm, that estimates as many as 70-percent of social media campaigns will fail in 2011. There are a series of discussions hitting the blogosphere and the Twitterverse exploring this very topic, some elementary and others on the right path. I contacted Gartner earlier this week and the problem is, that this data isn’t new at all. In fact, these discussions are fueled by information originally published in 2008 and in early 2010.
Yet another example of the importance of fact-checking in the era of real-time reporting, yes, but, when I paused for a moment, I appreciated the timelessness of this discussion. Are many of the social media programs in play yielding tangible results? No… Are they designed to impact the bottom line or are they tied to meaningful business outcomes? The truth is that you can’t fail in anything if success is never defined. Who What When Where Why How To what extent. Why I Stopped Reading Your Blog. I am a very loyal person. I have been married to the same woman for 32 years.
Most of my close, personal friends have been friends for a decade or more. I have gone to the same church for 27 years. Once I let you into my life, I almost never ask you to leave. Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/Devonyu But I just unsubscribed to your blog. This wasn’t an easy decision. Why? Your titles make me yawn. Deal Of A Lifetime: First Marriage Proposal On Groupon. It had to happen sooner or later. The mark of a truly ubiquitous social phenomenon is when somebody uses it to propose to someone else.
We’ve seen marriage proposals on Twitter, Facebook, and the iPad. Now we have what appears to be the first marriage proposal on Groupon. And what a deal it is. A guy named Greg in Cincinnati offered to marry a woman named Dana, and it only cost her $1 (total value of the deal is $999,999, which I guess is the maximum allowed on Groupon, but can you really put a price on love?). Looks like she bought it because “the deal is on.” The great thing is that if you click the buy button, you too can become engaged to Greg. Congratulations Dana or Stranger, You are now unofficially obliged to marry Greg! Kids today. Report: New York Times Has More Twitter Followers than Print Readers.
The New York Times now has more Twitter followers than print circulation. Could a future of so long print and hello headlines in 140 characters or less be far away? The New York Times tops the list of the top 25 newspapers on Twitter with more than 2.6 million followers. The Times is the “only newspaper from the top 25 with more Twitter followers than print circulation,” reports Journalistics, the blog that compiled the list. The list was released yesterday, the same day the New York Times Co., the paper’s publisher, posted third-quarter sales that fell short of estimates as advertising and circulation revenue declined.
The paper has long planned to begin charging readers for content online to increase revenue. A report last month from the Pew Research Center showed that, for the first time, more people are getting their news online than from print newspapers.