Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve heard of the Pepsi Refresh Project, a bold new campaign by PepsiCo that’s giving away millions of dollars to fund good ideas, big and small, that make the world a better place.

Anyone can submit their idea online at: www.refresheverything.com where submissions are voted on by those who register on the site, allocating funds to the ideas they decide will do the most good. We caught up with Anamaria Irazabal, Director of Pepsi-Cola Marketing and leader of the Pepsi Refresh Project, to talk about marketing to Millennials.

Ypulse: What does the Pepsi brand mean to Millennials?

Anamaria Irazabal: Pepsi is a brand for those with a youthful spirit and as a generation, Millennials personify our approach to marketing. While other generations, such as Boomers, represent a youthful spirit and currently account for higher consumption on a volume basis, Millennials represent who we are as a brand. Millennials are looking toward the future, attempting to evolve who they are and, as a challenger generation, have the same aspirations as our brand. Moreover, PepsiCo has a Millennial mindset and within the team we have a broad group of Millennials that work with our brands, helping to push our marketing efforts to the next level.

YP: What are the overall goals of the Refresh project?

AI: The Pepsi Refresh project is the foundation for Pepsi moving forward. Our three brands, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max will stand solidly on what we’ve built this year. What we want is that when people, and specifically Millennials are standing in a store and staring at the shelves they buy the brand that is aligned with the values that they hold. We know that Millennials have very strong values about making the world a better place, taking the power within their hands and making change … real. It’s all about building an emotional connection. It’s all about the conversations that they’re looking for and it’s not only about supporting a cause, it’s about supporting an idea that they believe in, that they can relate to on a personal level. Supporting a friend’s desire to build a new baseball field in their own community is more immediate and more powerful than supporting a distant cause or charity. The feeling of autonomy and the ability to choose that the Pepsi Refresh project offers is democracy and engagement at it’s best.

YP: Are there particular projects that Millennials care most about?

AI: One of the best aspects about the Refresh project is that it is rich in data. There are three categories of the six that are close to the hearts of Millennials:

1. Neighborhoods: What’s going on around me
2. Education: What’s going on in my school
3. Arts & Culture: The first programs to have their funding cut

The other three categories: health, food & shelter and the planet are still important to Millennials, however, there are other, large non-profit organizations that are tackling these problems. Interestingly, kids are applying for the lower-level grants (e.g. $5,000) rather than the larger grant amounts ($250,000). Kids don’t know how to think in amounts that large. Additionally, Millennials are looking to make small, immediate changes rather than plan for a multi-year project. One of our biggest concerns about the projects started by Millennials is how do we continue the positive impact of their ideas into the future.

YP: Has the economic crisis had an impact on the Refresh campaign?

AI: The program would have been different in a different economy. Not for profit organizations are receiving less funding than before as priorities have shifted as a result of the recession, both by the government as well as by individual donors. However, the American consumer would like to be generous. Everybody wants to help. That’s the beauty of the Pepsi Refresh campaign: people feel that by participating and voting they are doing their part. It’s part of our culture to do good, to take power into your own hands and make things happen. People are not waiting for a big organization to redo the park in their community, they are holding bake sales and doing fundraising on their own. The fact that a brand that they love is coming to the table with money and all they need to do is campaign for their idea is a big thing for them.

YP: What tactics are you using to reach Millennials? How are these different from how Pepsi used to market to youth in the past?

AI: Tactics have changed to deal with the reduced attention span of Millennials, who watch TV with a computer on their lap and a mobile phone in their hand. Millennials want to consume the world without missing a beat, interacting with so many things at the same time that you can no longer presume their attention. To engage Millennials you have to present them with something interesting and encourage them to interact with your brand. You can’t shout at them, rather, you need to start a dialogue with them. This approach is new to all of us in the marketing world, requiring a different sensibility as well as techniques that are not taught in Marketing 101.

Engaging in a dialogue is the beauty of the Pepsi Refresh Project, not only intended for Millennials but for all agents of change, people who want to make the world a better place, regardless of their generation. Millennials represent almost 40% of the participants in the Pepsi Refresh project – they vote, they promote and they represent the majority of the independent ideas (those ideas that are not tied to a pre-existing cause or non-profit) that are submitted. There is a lot of energy to bring ideas and make them a reality from this generation. They are not dreamers, they are really executors and what better brand to help them make their dreams a reality than Pepsi?

YP: Has the Pepsi Refresh campaign been effective in winning over the Millennial Generation? What are your metrics for success?

AI: There are three things that the Pepsi Refresh project is helping for Pepsi:

1. Purchase intent for our brands
2. Knowledge and awareness of PepsiCo’s commitment to social responsibility
3. The participation of Millennials within the program and with the brand

We did not expect this program to have an immediate impact on sales or volume, realizing that it would take commitment and time for it to work. So far we cannot complain about anything that we’ve seen from the program to date.

YP: What are the specific tactics that you are using to make this work?

AI: We planned to make a massive media impact, but what is interesting is how information is being distributed. The main traffic isn’t coming directly from people typing in refresheverything.com, rather, people are most often introduced to the project via referral. The first interaction to the website is usually from someone sending them a link to vote for an idea. Once they vote for their friend’s idea, they’ll investigate other ideas within the same category as well as within other categories. Facebook has been a big part of this referral process and we’re starting to see mobile voting becoming stronger as well. We don’t want to capture or incarcerate people within a web site, we’d like people to participate from wherever they are. While the website needs to exist as a central repository of ideas, you can interact with the brand with whatever screen you are using: TV, web or phone.

While we respect the dialogue and are working to nurture and protect it, we still sell, market and run promotions. We’re still a brand. We’ll always do the traditional marketing that results in sales volume within an appropriate context. We’re actively doing both, but authenticity is very important so we need to be very creative on how our traditional marketing and sales promotions work within the Pepsi Refresh Project.

YP: What lessons have you learned from reaching out to Millennials? What comes next for the Pepsi Refresh project?

AI: This program represents the foundation of the brand moving forward, this pro-social campaign represents only a piece of what we’ll do in the near future. There are other, more traditional endeavors that we have to do, that your customers and retailers expect from you. We cannot pretend to be the honor students when we’ve always been the cool kid in the class. Authenticity is contextual, so Pepsi still has to represent a brand that does big things like being fun and talking about celebrities. We can never lose our DNA, so we’ll work hard to maintain our edge, even while we are doing a pro-social campaign.

For more coverage of youth marketing, go to the Ypulse Youth Marketing Channel sponsored by Youth Marketing Connection.

Categorized under: Youth Marketing

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