Pepsi Refresh a total failure or too early to tell?

I recently read an article by Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian, summarizing the results of the Pepsi Refresh project. He concluded that it was a total failure.

‘The Refresh Project accomplished everything a social media program is expected to: Over 80 million votes were registered; almost 3.5 million "likes" on the Pepsi Facebook page; almost 60,000 Twitter followers. The only thing it failed to do was sell Pepsi.

It achieved all the false goals and failed to achieve the only legitimate one.’

He made a very convincing point. But the skeptic in me says ‘Hold on. Dig deeper’. Of course the ultimate objective of all marketing activities is to drive sales. However, there are broadly two types of results: immediate and long term. Pepsi Refresh did indeed fail to deliver on short term financial results. However, don’t underestimate the 80 million votes, 3.5 millions likes and 60,000 Twitter followers just yet! They may eventually deliver your long term financial success.

If you don’t believe me, at least read this Adage article (Of course social media works, if you measure it right). The value of the Refresh program was to acquire new consumers into Pepsi’s community. This is important because consumers opted into targeted advertising. This is important because consumers agreed to let Pepsi to mine their data. Pepsi now knows how old you are, where you live, who your friends are...

However, Pepsi hasn’t hit the jackpot yet. I don’t think we can tell the success or failure of the program just yet. The key to success is what Pepsi are doing with these new contacts. How do Pepsi engage them and guide them further along the purchase funnel? Turning acquired fans into advocates and sales is the holy grail.

Success or failure? Only time will tell.

What is Web 3.0?

I just came back from one of the largest and growing interactive conferences, SXSW. One of the hot topics was - What is Web 3.0. My impression was no one has quite cracked it. Some say mobile will be big, and data analytics is crucial. OK. Please tell us something we don’t already know…

There’s nothing 3.0 about mobile. It’s totally 2.0, and 2.1 at best (one can argue QR codes driving traffic to mobile sites is quite 2.1). Even with social location and augmented reality, they still don’t tip us over 2.x.

What is Web 3.0 then really? Well, if I have the answer, I wouldn’t be writing a blog post, but instead doing heavy coding in my garage. (Not that I have a garage either…) My take on the evolution of web 2.0 lies all in the long tail. Not exactly the long tail coined by Chris Anderson in 2004. Anderson’s theory was that most of the revenue comes from many niche products, and only 20% of revenue is from big hits, mainstream products. In general, one can interprete that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

To build on the long tail theory, my take is that we are using the long tail to identify and connect with like minded people. Our attention and needs will become more fragmented. We will breakdown our interests to finer levels. And with the vast amount of data the web has on us, it will become much better at understanding our fragmented interests, and connect us with people who share those interests. Case in point -Twitter. Twitter lets us connect to people with very specific interest. If you like baby blue peep toes platform shoes, there’s probably already a hashtag for this on Twitter. The Lists feature on Twitter is a tool to help you segment your contacts. What missing is the ability to post tweets to specific groups.

Having that said, the need to connect to the 20% ‘mainstream’ people will not go away. And this is where Facebook comes in.

But this is no where near Web 3.0 either. So let me know if you have a better idea, I got some savings. Perhaps I’ll be your angel investor ;)