To those who didn’t make it to the Social Media Influence Conference in London in June this year, one of the most stunning speakers was B. Bonin Bough who is the Global director of Digital and Social Media at PepsiCo. He talked at length how PepsiCo have used Social Media Marketing but the stunning thing for me was the Pepsi Refresh Project.

The Pepsi Refresh project was driven by social media and allowed the public to submit ideas for grants and allowed the public to vote for the best ideas. They have, so far, received over 30 million votes. That in itself is amazing, but even more outstanding is the viral nature of the project which has all the mainstream press and news outlets talking about it. So far it has generated over one billion media impressions in broadcast, print and online. I guess it sold a lot of Pepsi as well.
B. Bonin Bough said in his presentation, ‘That social media-led project has done more to change the whole company’s brand, for the good, than any other campaign.’

One other take-away from presentation was ‘Don’t let perfection get in the way of good.’ In this section Mr Bough talks of running with an idea even if it doesn’t quite work yet. If the technology isn’t perfect then run with it anyway.

The video clip below is of the while presentation, the Refresh Project starts at about 22 minutes in.