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W
HAT I
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OCIAL B
USINESS
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Pepsico’s “The Juice” campaign is another example of how this higher calling and
shared purpose (in the traditional marketing context, extended to social media) works.
The strategy behind this campaign shows how effective social media programs—and the
savvy businesses with the skills to correctly execute in this medium—really work. Built
on BlogHer, The Juice was a core element of the promotional platform for Pepsico’s
low-cal Trop50 brand orange juice. BlogHer co-founder and COO Elisa Camahort
Page shared the following insight—consistent with the idea of a higher purpose. The
campaign anchor—the social motive—for BlogHer and The Juice is not the sponsoring
brand. Instead, it is something larger: The anchor is found in the common interest of all
women around seeking ways to find more balance, more health, and more helpful tips
for use in their lives. PepsiCo’s value proposition to its customers and the larger BlogHer
community as both sponsor and purveyor of Trop50 fits naturally within this.
The Juice benefits from the natural alignment between brands, interests, pas-
sions, lifestyles, and causes along with the specific tasks, questions, and the things
people want to know more about. It’s the questions they want answered, the moments
they want to share, and the problems that they want solved that drive this effective
social program.
$pend Your Way to a Social Presence
The appeal to a higher calling—to a lifestyle, passion, or cause—is what drives organic
participation and growth in online social communities. The payoffs are lower ongoing
expenses and a higher degree of “stickiness” and participation and advocacy for the com-
munity. Given the central role established for the higher social object, a question arises
here: What is it that powers social marketing applications, communities, and sites which
lack a cause, passion, or lifestyle connection as seen in programs like Pepsi’s “The Juice”?
The answer is typically spending. This is not to overlook the great creative work
that goes into promotional campaigns, but rather to note that spend-driven programs
versus purpose or values-aligned programs will often lag in the organic growth that
truly powers social media and the waves of activity that occur on the Social Web.
To understand why this is so, compare the social appeal of the Old Spice
Deodorant social media campaign shown in Figure 3.4 with the basic social appeal of
Facebook, Orkut or other social networking sites, where participation is driven largely
out of a desire to interact with other members of these networks. People join them to
meet other people as well as to share experiences around the brands they love (along
with a whole lot of other things).
Great social sites grow organically based on an individual’s realization of a rea-
son to be there: Facebook and Orkut, for example, both deliver on the basic desires of
people to meet other people and socialize. Members see the value in “more members”
so they actively encourage their friends to join. The obvious purpose and basic appeal
of these sites combine to drive organic growth.