Pepsi Refresh Project

Brilliant. 

“Can soda really make the world a better place?” Pepsi in the US is doing exactly that, with your help (your - if you’re American).

Rather than spend millions of dollars on Superbowl advertising this year (last year they spend $33 M), Pepsi is investing $20 M into The Pepsi Refresh Project, a crowdsourced philanthropy campaign , which asks the public how and where to spend its money.  Every month of 2010 Pepsi will reward up to $1.3 million in Refresh Grants to give out every month.

From individual projects to company-wide initiatives and organizations themselves, anyone can submit an idea and promote it to life.  The steps are as follows:

1)      Have an Idea

2)      Download [the 10-page] toolkit

3)      Submit your idea

4)      Promote it

5)      Vote

Pepsi will receive extra impressions and press by the promotion mechanic, which encourages users to post their ideas to their social networks (Facebook example is shown below) in order to increase their votes.  Votes help to decide which ideas will receive Pepsi Grants each month (I’m not sure to what extent voting influences the grants).

This is brilliant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it will extend their campaign reach far beyond football fans.  It will also run throughout the year, and has legs far beyond that, in following up on the initiatives it has started and / or helped.  It has the ability to create communities and even movements around certain ideas.  And obviously, it looks good.  

A few months ago, I write about Foursquare Pepsi Points, in which every point scored within a day raised $0.04 for CampInteractive.  Pepsi is certainly being very giving these days - and donating in innovative ways - well done them.

The first call for idea submissions for the Pepsi Refresh Project is due on January 13^th, with voting beginning February 1^st and grants rewarded on March 1^st. 

Visit the RefreshEverything site for more