Vertical Measures

Pepsi’s Social Campaign is a True Super Ad

Michael Schwartz — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:44:01 +0000

Pepsi commercials have become as much a part of Super Bowl lore as overblown halftime shows and players thanking the Lord for throwing that game-winning touchdown.

For 23 straight years the popular soda brand showed an advertisement, which is such a long time that John Elway was a young hotshot quarterback playing in his first championship game when a Pepsi Super Bowl commercial first aired.

Citing TNS Intelligence, ESPN reported that Pepsi spent $142.8 million on Super Bowl ads between 1999-2008, second only to popular Super Bowl advertiser Anheuser-Busch.

Pepsi’s about-face has nothing to do with Peyton Manning and Drew Brees; this is about a brand understanding that the future of marketing is on the Internet and spending those dollars accordingly.

In place of its annual Super Bowl ad, Pepsi initiated the Pepsi Refresh Project, which asks the American people to post ideas that will have a "positive impact" in communities around the nation. Pepsi is awarding grants of different sizes, ranging from $5K to $250K.

The project involves people submitting ideas, people voting on these ideas, and then Pepsi making a charitable contribution via the crowdsourcing project. The leading $5K idea at this moment has to do with shipping Girl Scout cookies to soldiers overseas and the top $250K project involves providing healing, hope and possibility to survivors of violence and abuse via the Joyful Heart Foundation.

This idea is pure genius on the part of Pepsi, a company that apparently really gets what it means to advertise in 2010.

First off, the biggest thing you want from a Super Bowl commercial is buzz. I doubt anybody even remembers Coke’s commercial, whereas everybody is talking about this.

According to a recent Nielsen survey, Pepsi received about 21 percent of the online buzz and media coverage around Super Bowl advertising, 10 times as much as Coke.

We also know this because the project has accumulated over 500K Facebook fans and has a Twitter presence on the official Pepsi Twitter account that’s pushing the #PepsiRefresh hashtag.

Plus, instead of just throwing a couple million down the drain, Pepsi is actually doing something to help real-life communities.

That’s not even to say anything about what this means in terms of link building. How many links do you think Coke got from its clever but not exactly earth shattering Simpson’s commercial? By comparison, many people online are talking about "the shock" around Pepsi deciding not to advertise in the big game and doing this instead, and that means links.

From a pure natural link building standpoint, Pepsi is already squeezing much more value out of this campaign than a couple 30-second spots in front of the country ever could yield.

Pepsi clearly gets this new age of marketing, which involves interacting with the people and injecting yourself into the conversation. Throwing in a charitable contribution doesn’t hurt either, and all that for about $10 million less than it usually less spends on Super Bowl ads.

Who says you can’t measure a return on investment with social media?

Google joins the Super Bowl party

As Pepsi turned to the power of the Internet, Google ventured into the Super Bowl ad space for the first time, showing "Parisian Love" (embedded below) in the third quarter of Sunday’s game.

The ad may have seemed familiar to you Google fanatics because it has run on YouTube for over three months.

Writing in the official Google blog, Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote, "We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience."

By sharing it with a wider audience, Schmidt means that ad wasn’t for people like you and me who use Google every day and understand its power; it’s for your grandmother who doesn’t know what a Google is and doesn’t realize the numerous positive benefits of search, Google in particular.

Google already owns the market share for "us," this commercial was all about making an impression with the casual Internet users who don’t yet realize all the things Google can do for them.

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Race For the Best Link

Kaila S. — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:55:28 +0000

Every month here at Vertical Measures our team competes for a few things: employee of the month, atta-person awards (an employee to employee card given for exemplary work), and the best client link. Employee of the month is determined by votes, atta-person cards are accumulated and drawn out of a hat, but the best client link is the hardest to award. What makes a link ‘the best’? Is it the client link placed on a high page rank site without anchor text, or a link placed on a lower page rank site with anchor text? Of course relevance is a large factor, but when it comes down to it the determination of a final winner isn’t clear.

At this week’s Monday meeting (when the awards were given out) two of our employees, Michael and James, were up for the award. A debate ensued, and it was determined there is only one real way to determine a winner: a race off! In the red shirt we have Michael Schwartz: 5′7 1/2", and in the blue shirt we have: James Constable: 6′5". Wanna know who won the title of "Top Link Builder"? Check out the video below!

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Simple Social Media Marketing Tactics Amplify Your Brands Voice

Kaila S. — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:22:42 +0000

Why are the most simple concepts usually the most "successful" at drawing traffic on social media platforms? Simple marketing ideas like giving away free stuff, betting users to take action, and support a cause are just a couple examples. Using these social media marketing tactics can prove beneficial to your brand, if after asking yourself "could my brand profit from the attention of hundreds of thousands?", your answer is yes.

We’ve put together a list of a few that have proven successful. Why not integrate these ideas into your next marketing campaign? At the very least the below suggestions will get the creative juices flowing!

Give Something Away For Free

You’ve likely seen it before, become a fan and we’ll give you something for free. Recently Einstein Bros gave similar incentive for users to fan their brand on Facebook, in return delving out bagels to the tune of $847,500 (1 for each of their 339,000+ fans) so far. Fans have flocked. Victorias Secret ran a similar campaign and had great success as well. What can you give away that will appeal to the masses?

Appeal to the 4^th Grader in All of Us

Take for example Facebook groups or Fan pages like "I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who hate cancer" (1,727,510 members), or "I bet I can still find 1,000,000 people who dislike George Bush" (953,501 members). These groups and fan pages have become widely successful, so why not use a similar concept to fuel your online Internet marketing efforts? Over at Feverbee.com Richard Millington discusses this concept in his post.

Support a Cause

The outpouring of support for those affected in Haiti by the recent earthquake has turned to social media to help with donations. Popping up across Twitter and Facebook are brands looking to help, while also involving their fans. "Follow us and we’ll donate $1 for every follower", "Subscribe to our blog and we’ll donate $1 for every new subscriber", are just a couple examples. Others are getting involved and putting together Haiti Relief "Cause" applications on their Facebook pages. Donations can be made directly on the app, generating traffic to a corporate page (take for example Global Disaster Relief).

Destroy Something

Not to sound like a broken record by giving this next example, but it still rings true: Blendtec’s Will It Blend. The concept: run tests on whether or not a simple item will blend, video it, and show it to the world. Also fun: will it float, and will it bounce.

Get Your Groove On

A simple dancing video uploaded to YouTube has the potential to skyrocket your popularity. Take for example the Wedding Entrance video seen ’round the world. To date: 41.4 million views. Give it a try, just don’t make it too commercial.

Interview and Promote

We recently took this simple concept and it yielded a large increase in our blog visitors. In our post "How To: Create and Promote Link Worthy Content" we discussed our method and the outcome. Who can you interview in your industry? Landing a big name interview can help you achieve more recognition for your brand.

What are some other simple concepts you’ve seen implemented that have been popular online?

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Poetry Contest: Ode to SEO

Kaila S. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:00:32 +0000

It’s official: today is the first day of our Ode to SEO scholarship contest! Students currently enrolled in high school, college, or grad school have an opportunity to win a $1,000 scholarship OR a new iPad! The new iPad was recently announced and the Internet is buzzing about this computer tablet. Simply write a catchy and interesting poem, submit your poetry contest entry and check back on February 22nd to see if you’re a finalist. Then, get your friends and family to vote and help you win this great prize. The final 1st and 2nd place winners will be announced on our blog on February 24th (subscribe to our blog, follow us on Twitter or fan us on Facebook to be notified of finalists and the winners).

We’re excited about this promotion and hope you are too! There’s no time like the present to encourage younger generations to get started in our great industry. We’re hoping to inspire the next generation of Internet marketers, help spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, and via e-mail too. If you have any questions about this promotion please e-mail us at promos@verticalmeasures.com.

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What Movie Rentals Could Mean for YouTube and You

Michael Schwartz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:54:03 +0000

When YouTube announced last week that it would be offering five films from the Sundance Film Festival for $3.99 a pop, it wasn’t a big deal because people no longer had to make like Ari Gold and Vinny Chase from Entourage to view some of the best independent films upon their release.

Instead it’s a big deal because it could be the first step for the popular Google-owned video sharing site to eventually adopt mainstream fare into its already robust menu of wedding dancing and baby biting videos.

The biggest question surrounding YouTube for years, not unlike Twitter, is when will it stop being a bandwidth hog and start justifying the $1.65 billion price Google paid to acquire it three years ago?

There is only so much money that can be made from Google ads, so YouTube protruding into the rentals market could be significant.

According to The Huffington Post, analyst Douglas Anmuch projects YouTube to produce about $700 million in revenue this year, which would be a 55 percent increase from 2009 in large part because advertisers will be more willing to put ads next to professional content than amateur and potentially offensive material.

No doubt we’re still months away from YouTube becoming Netflix, if that ever indeed does happen; this is just a trial for certain.

It’s not going to be easy for YouTube to negotiate with major motion picture agencies, but this is another step in the paradigm shift in how we watch movies.

Why would anybody go to Blockbuster again when they could watch movies on demand on Netflix or YouTube?

Beyond the rental charge, I wonder what kind of monetary opportunities such a shift would mean for YouTube.

Could they get advertisers to sponsor the video page with a relevant ad that would be showing on the webpage during the viewing? That would certainly cost a pretty penny for sponsors.

For link builders, this could be most noteworthy because the popular "Related Videos" tab remains intact for the Sundance videos.

A company that offers video marketing services such as Vertical Measures could create a video with the aim to go viral and optimize it with keywords related to the major motion picture. If the general public agrees that the video is as entertaining as you think it is, its hits would likely explode.

Of course, this would not be as good as getting direct traffic to your actual site, but it could drum up buzz and at least a nice bit of traffic from the link to your site in the description of the video.

If YouTube becomes a giant in the movie rental industry as it could be poised to become in the coming years, you will definitely want to ride its coattails for your own benefit.

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