Pepsi Refresh

You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard of the Pepsi Refresh project. It's been heavily advertised and promoted for months now, with a lot of celebrity endorsements as well.

Truthfully, though, I have not paid much attention to it. Not sure why, just didn't hit me - didn't seem real to me. But I did a little digging, and found the project to be quite amazing and very real.

Basically, you simply write up a proposal on how you'd like to do a project that will somehow help others and submit it under one of these categories:

- health

- art & culture

- food & shelter

- the planet

- neighborhoods

- education

Each category has an "ambassador" that helps to promote the projects.

Pepsi takes 1,000 ideas a month and places them into funding buckets of $5,000 increments, totalling what looks like $1,300,000 in funding a month. Then the public votes on the ideas, and Pepsi awards the grant money. Very simple, very real.

Pepsi also added another category to support the clean-up in the Gulf and has added an extra $1,300,000 for projects in that region alone.

The best part is that it's so easy to participate, either with a proposal or to vote on those submitted. And it's fascinating to review all of the proposals and to see all the amazing ideas put worth by some really good people. Warms the heart. Check them out here.

It's fully integrated cause marketing, with connections to the website, Facebook, advertising, and retail. There's even a voting app.

I know that there has been criticism that the brand is basically just trying to sell soda, but I disagree. The brand, that all of us can choose to purchase or not, is making a huge attempt to help people help others. I personally don't want to criticize that. This was such a great idea, I wish I had paid more attention to it sooner.

What's your experience? Jim.