Earlier this week, Pepsi Australia’s Hit Refresh social media and heavyweight outdoor campaign started it’s promotions activation phase, via a Twitter treasure hunt and the engagement so far has been extremely high. This is a campaign I’ve been working on since late 2009, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing social brand advocacy in action at a grass roots level in the Gen Y and Gen Z demographic. Particularly on Facebook, Fans of the page are spontaneously sharing their love of Pepsi, requesting the treasure hunt come to their city, and enjoying the MTV TV spots.
There are a few points about this campaign that makes it distinctive in both the social media and advertising landscape in Australia:
Twitter as interactive backchat
Twitter since it’s launch 3 years ago has been a major part of SXSW, so much so that Pepsico spent some sponsorship dollars this year in creating an interactive visualizer of the various Twitter streams, following the parties just as much as the event itself.
Which brings me to the most pop cultural use of Twitter as interactive backchat. So You Think You Can Dance Australia has a bunch of amateur commentators (me included I’m afraid) who sit on Twitter every Sunday and Monday evening, tweeting on the minutae of costumes, music, hair, camerawork and oh yes, the dancing. Every week, the #sytycd hashtag becomes a trending topic, prompting Twitter users from opposite hemispheres (literal as well as metaphorical) to ask “what’s sytycd?”. Meanwhile the backchat goes on in an interactive (at least amongst the amateur commentators) stream.