Monday, June 4, 2012

The Pepsi Refresh Project


            As highlighted in chapter seven of Mainwaring’s We First, in 2010, Pepsi made the bold decision to fund the Pepsi Refresh Project instead of spending millions of dollars sponsoring Super Bowl commercials, like it had done for so many years in order to compete with longtime rival Coke. Individuals, he adds, as well as businesses and non-profits, could complete an application on the refresheverything.com site and submit it with an explanation of their cause along with a monatary category selection, ranging anywhere from five thousand to a quarter of a million dollars, that Pepsi would donate. The beauty of this particular initiative was that consumers, not Pepsi executives, would make the decision of which cause to fund via a social media voting process. This is a good example of crowdsourcing.

According to another article on the subject, 61million individuals voted in 2010 alone to voice their opinons and give their support on a myriad of causes. In comparison, 89 million voters participated in the general U.S. election that same year. Additionally, as of December of 2010, a total of 352 ideas have been funded by the program with $14.6 million invested by Pepsi out of the original $20 million pledged.  Lastly, this article also includes a great list of the Refresh Project-funded causes for 2010, take a couple of minutes to check it out.  Pepsi Refresh Project

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