First Dawn, now Pepsi. Something interesting is happening with brands out to do good and brands like BP who are (especially now) labelled with doing harm. Never before has one brand come to rescue a situation created by another brand. Rebellious brands like Apple and Virgin have always snubbed their noses at the establishment and found new and better ways to champion customers. But this is different and it’s worth noting.

For those of you who have spent the last six months under a log, ‘Refresh’ is the new big social campaign from Pepsi whereby they diverted their leviathan Super Bowl ad budget to crowd-source CSR funding initiatives. Now, Pepsi is spending a month of their campaign and $1.3m of their ‘Refresh’ budget to fund projects that help the disaster in the Gulf.

So why is this campaign different? Instead of championing a customer issue, or even taking on a social issue to do with the beverage market, Pepsi have come to the rescue of a disaster caused by another company/brand. The Gulf disaster is different than other disasters as it is so closely associated with BP similar to the Exxon Valdez spill or Union Carbide’s Bhopal. Therefore, there is no avoiding the brand-association.

There are many ways to set a civil strategy for a brand. One way is to analyse the issues within your own industry. Dove’s insight was that the beauty industry does harm to women’s self-esteem. Citi focused on the financial industry’s harmful prioritisation on money above all else with their ‘Live Richly’ campaign.

The Pepsi campaign is the first that I have seen where a brand looks outside its own industry to help solve problems associated with another industry. This strategy not only helps draw attention to brand, it reduces any risk of hypocrisy that can result from an activist approach (see previous Dove post). Pepsi can nicely sidestep any such charge by staying out of the issues that surround their industry (like water usage, obesity and worker rights) and give responsibility to their customers by crowd-sourcing the projects that will make the campaign work.

Amnesty International adopts a similar risk reduction strategy with causes and countries: ensuring that local chapters are not harassed by requiring them to only campaign about issues in other countries. Pepsi skilfully demonstrates how brands can enter into more social and civil discussions by concentrating on issues outside their own industry.  Of course, this strategy cannot divert attention from the harm present in any native industry, but it appears to be a less risky approach for raising civil issues in this particular case.

Related:
+ Our previous article on Pepsi Refresh

Apple has a reputation for closely guarding its secrets, so I cannot confirm if the vision I came across many years ago is true: “Man is the creator of change in this world. He should be above systems and structures, not subordinate to them”. Whether accurate or not, it does ring true when we examine the liberty-focused brand from California. Apple’s logo is a symbol of liberty (Adam & Eve eating the fruit of knowledge). They even flew a Jolly Roger pirate flag outside their office when launching a new product.

Apple ads have adopted a liberty/freedom based narrative in different ways over the years. The famous 1984 ad speaks directly to the libertarian narrative. Other ads, like the Jeff Goldblum series speak to the functional derivatives of man-machine liberty: ease of use.

Steve Jobs keynote introducing the infamous 1984 ad

Geoff Goldblum driving ease of use

What would you do to change the world?

Think Different campaign: Challengers of the status quo

Despite writing this post on a PC, I do very much enjoy the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” spots. Despite their great success, this is the best example of the real public mud-slinging campaign between Microsoft and Apple. It’s beyond reason, but Microsoft has responded with a positive spin on “I’m a PC”. I can’t imagine what the rationale for this response is, other than wanting to give Apple even more attention and look poor by comparison.

But beyond the frontal attack on all things PC, these ads do capture an ongoing battle that Apple has with Microsoft. It’s easy to understand that every revolution needs an enemy but Apple have, to date, created some of the most consistently good communications around. So, it begs the question of whether these comparison ads are really  necessary to fuel the Apple culture for employees and customer devotees or whether they can simply focus on being great?

I’m a Mac, I’m a PC

The paper that outlines our civil branding effort and explains a technique for creating more civil brands is now ready for download. Inside, you will find the following:

[1] Synopsis of the civil branding idea and its importance to marketers and society.
[2] Step-by-step process for creating more differentiated, more civil brands.
[3] Case studies from Citibank, Dove, Benetton, HSBC and others.

+ Download here