A refreshing move from Pepsi for the start of the new decade: asking people in the US what they’d like Pepsi to spend its philanthropy budget on, rather than the Pepsi corporate responsibility department allocating it as they see fit. This approach is being labelled ‘crowdsourcing CSR’ or ‘crowdsourcing philanthrophy’. Fast Company has referenced it in a piece called ‘Is Philanthropy the New Marketing?‘.

Pepsi says it wants this to be a participatory exercise (getting people to participate with the Pepsi brand more), and it seems like a great idea to achieve this. At the same time, it will increase awareness that Pepsi does contribute to society and so prime Pepsi’s civil branding status.

The campaign to promote the initiative will probably meet the 3Is Civil Branding criteria: Important – yes community projects are important; Inclusive – yes community projects bring people together; Influential – yes Pepsi is an influential brand. Read more on engaging people with issues they find important and the significance of this in social media campaigns in an earlier post The secret ingredient for successful social media campaigns.

The feedback that Pepsi gets from people about where they think money should be spent will be a useful indicator of what people in the US think are the most important issues in civil society, as well as telling Pepsi how they should spend their money of course.

Great start to the new decade, thank you Pepsi!