How Legit is Pepsi Refresh?

After the Chase debacle, one could forgive the nonprofit sector for being a little leery of cause marketing competitions. Now, though, Pepsi has launched its major "Pepsi Refresh" initiative, the company's major brand positioning for 2010. At the centerpiece of "Refresh" is a series of monthly cause marketing competitions, in which up to 1,000 nonprofits can compete for award money. Each month, users vote up the top nonprofits and Pepsi will select up to 32 winners.

The question is: how does the initiative stack up? At first glance, it seems to be doing a whole lot of things better than some of its predecessors.

Here's a run-down of its notable features:

1. Varying competition levels. One of the challenges of something like the Chase competition was that the variety of entrants meant that tiny nonprofits with a few staff were competing against comparative juggernauts with far wider networks and far more time. Refresh addresses this by having four different award levels — $5,000, $25,000, $50,000, and $250,000 — so that organizations can pick the level at which they're most likely to compete successfully.

2. Prominent Leaderboard. One of the biggest complaints with the Chase competition was that they didn't have a leaderboard, making it very difficult for nonprofits to know where they stood. Refresh prominently features leaderboards (although I wish they'd also feature vote tallies).

3. Rollover value. The top 100 vote-getters per month are automatically entered into the next month's competition, although they don't start the month with legacy votes. This means that an organization that doesn't win, but has worked hard to mobilize, doesn't have to go through the application process to be listed again.

4. Promise of a quick turnaround. Pepsi Refresh claims that they will get the money out to organizations within a matter of weeks after the competition ends. That claim demonstrates they understand the sort of pressure most nonprofits are under, and if they can pull it off, it would be a serious model to emulate.

5. Deeper partnerships. Pepsi is working with GOOD magazine and a few other partners, presumably to make sure that they actually understand and add value in ways that resonate with the lived experience of nonprofits. While Chase had an advisory board, this seems to me a deeper level of partnership that could make a big difference.

At the end of the day, it's still early, and "Refresh" is still just another kind of cause marketing. As Umair Haque argues in a post today, the campaign is great, but let's remember that in the end, it's being run by a company that makes sugar water. Still, though, it's good to see that we're not all howling into a vacuum, and that in fact there is some real room for partnerships with big companies like Pepsi.

Photo Credit: jacreative