Pepsi’s RefreshEverything campaign is underway and has the nominal challenge of going up against the Super Bowl, sort of, and Haiti, sort of. Basically, this campaign asks the soda’s drinkers to tell Pepsi what it should do with $20 million by the end of the year. Hint: lots of charities are salivating for fizz-pop-moneys. It’s a TBWA joint, and the second of late to show some potential.
Purpose-driven advertising as a rule can’t be a bad thing, can it? Will drinkers think “when I buy this Pepsi, the money will at least partially go to some social campaign”? If I’m buying a soda, guilt may push me to the blue can.
If successful, the work will mean a couple of things. Namely, Coca-Cola will look cheap (they’re giving $500k to charity as part of a social media campaign, reports the New York Times). Secondly, TBWA will look good for the second time this year.
The first bit of positive news for TBWA in 2010 came just after the 52nd annual Grammys ended last night and ratings started to come in. A headline from this morning’s press release informs the show posted “year-to-year Gains of +35% in viewers, +32% in both adults 18-49 and adults 18-34 and +36% in adults 25-54”. This, Chiat will hope, is due to their semi-massive campaign for the award show.
Though final ratings aren’t in (our hands), here’s a look at what we knew as of last night:
From 8:00-11:30 PM, THE GRAMMY AWARDS posted a 14.3/23 in households with 25.80m viewers, 10.6/24 in adults 25-54, 9.8/24 in adults 18-49 and 9.1/24 in adults 18-34. From 8:00-11:00 PM, CBS dominated the competition in all key ratings measures.
Compared to last year’s broadcast (on February 8, 2009), CBS was up +28% in households (from 11.2/18), +36% in adults 25-54 (from 7.8/18), +32% in both adults 18-49 (from 7.4/18) and adults 18-34 (from 6.9/18) and added +6.75m viewers (from 19.05m, +35%).
The ratings were the show’s best since 2004. Sure, maybe it had to do with the all-star performances. It feels like there’s just a lot of good talent these days. But who can say? We’re feigning from a “Chiat-is-back” like statement, but folks there are probably sighing all over the place.
Update: We’ve been asking around about who else is responsible for this campaign, and have finally gotten part of an answer. HUGE is responsible for all the digital stuff and social networking stuff in the Pepsi Refresh Project, we’ve learned. So that means Chiat came up with the general concept and did the print and TV ads.
More: “Cool: TBWA\Chiat\Day’s Campaign for the 52nd Grammys”