Pepsi 'kada can: Be on the next Pepsi can

kada-can or kadacan is derived from two words: Kada from Barkada (meaning a group of close friends in English) while can stands for "Pepsi can." You guessed it right: Pepsi is holding a big user-generated content contest where the winners will adorn the next Pepsi can.


The mechanic is that a barkada needs to go to Pepsi Kada can booths, and bring an unopened Pepsi product to have their pictures taken for free inside the booth. They can also upload their pictures via Pepsi's website.

People can vote via text messaging or via the website. Then the really cool thing is: Barkadas with the most votes will be on the next Pepsi can! There are also other prizes for People's choice and other winners.

I see two interesting things related to this:
1. A few months ago, Pepsi also ran a mobile campaign where every hour, a lucky person can win an iPod by texting in the code found in every Pepsi can to a mobile shortcode.
2. Lucky Me is also having a "be on our next product" contest via its "Lid the way" contest.

It seems to me that Pepsi is focused on digital marketing initiatives. They have also won some awards in last year's IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines). I present an analysis about this in my next entry.

Social Media for Marketers

Funny Post from Social Signal:

You would be entertained to see this presentation, look particularly at Slide 6:

Branding 2.0 & Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing media)

Lucky Me! Lid the way

Lucky me's "Lid the way" is a nice contest, promoted aggressively over the radio and out-of-home like billboards. The radio ad sounded hip, and it was the first time I heard a radio commercial bringing so much attention to the URL itself. There was even a short spiel saying "Lid-the-way-dot-com. L-I-D yan a (It's L-I-D)" since "lid" obviously can be mistaken as "lead."

(Although we can argue - why talk about saving the Earth when the plastic containers of Lucky me are non-biodegradable?)

When the site was newly introduced, the same radio ad played when the site first loads, but now the site has been revised, containing the finalists of the competition. There are some pretty nice submissions!

Obviously this contest can be done offline. But making contests such as this online has many advantages to my mind:

- Empower the consumer/creator
Somehow, seeing your work recognized and published serves to boost a person's ego. This will tie in to the viral component below: when a person sees his or her work posted, he or she will tell friends to visit it as well. If it is really good, these friends will also forward to other friends.

- Probability to go Viral
This is always best, because you reach people for free! People in the Philippines would probably link or mention the site in their social networks like Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, or discuss it in forums. However, this is something that can not be greatly influenced. Because bad news can also spread virally (take for example, the Dell "burning laptop" viral image below, taken from this source)

- Increased awareness for people who visit the site
For the people who were reached by the viral, they will also get the message that the product is trying to convey to them.

Yahoo! and the open movement

If Web1.0 was the reign of static sites and Web2.0 is the reign of social networks, Web3.0 may just be the reign of the mashup and widget, and Yahoo will be at the forefront of that change.

This was my key takeaway from a series of talks Yahoo Philippines held today at the National Sports Grill in Greenbelt.

Mashups and widgets involve major internet players like Yahoo and Google opening their applications to the general public. An example is Yahoo's BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) which gives developers access to the entire search index of Yahoo. Techcrunch has provided a very good timeline of Yahoo's open strategy, here. That actually uses a BOSS-derived product (customized in less than 30 seconds!) running a search of "Yahoo BOSS" in techcrunch.com

Check out the screenshot below for a sample site developed using BOSS.
Putting Yahoo in your site...
I am not a developer but I see the power of putting Yahoo apps in your websites. Customized Yahoo! news feed for my site filtered to my users' preferences, in-page Yahoo messenger, Yahoo! answers feed, there could be many things that can be done, and with my limited developer knowledge this barely touches the surface. What's better is we can also combine with other services. (For instance, I would like to see how Y! can work with a Popfly mashup, or combine Yahoo with Google/Skype/Twitter/Plurk/)

I accessed the Developer site of Yahoo at http://developer.yahoo.com and I was immediately pulled to the API documentations of its popular services like Answers, Flickr, delicious, and even the relatively new Fire Eagle. I would like to see some local Filipino sites leverage these... I may actually use some of these for an upcoming project I am working on.

Yahoo mentioned the need to become more active in social networks without necessarily stealing the traffic away from the networks. Instead, Yahoo would become more socially-oriented. Just what that exactly means, I am not sure. Can we check our social networks right from within Yahoo? Update our status in the networks using Yahoo apps? It's pretty much a wild world out there.

Right now, Yahoo mentioned it can only support having mashups with members of the OpenSocial movement, but will increase its scope in the future.

Digital marketing applications
We all know that Yahoo is very popular in the Philippines. Yahoo mail and messenger are staples of the Filipino internet lifestyle. Having these services within a branded site (of course, need to add that "special value-added service") will be beneficial for that brand, I think. I haven't seen executions of that style yet though.

Fab Facebook gadget

To my knowledge, no Philippine company so far has tapped social networks (Friendster, Facebook, Multiply, Myspace) and achieved monumental success. There are the banner ads but that's mainly it, nothing yet that has broken out of the mold the way Wario did on Youtube.

What could be the barriers preventing this? Cost? The fear of foraging into the unknown and backfiring world of social networks? These social networks' resellers in the Philippines?


This campaign by Fab done in Facebook is a welcome difference. Exploiting the assets and the recall caused by the wonderful girl-in-brother's-shirt commercial, they proceeded to make a Facebook app out of it.

I just wonder how they intend to use the information they gathered here... or was it purely for a fun consumer experience?

I've also seen Colgate do something in Facebook but those are primarily ads related to the Fresh Confidence video making contest.

ExperienceWii - viral marketing on a whole new level (with Youtube)

Viral marketing, when done right has amazing potential to increase the awareness of consumers for your product. The example in this link is a stellar viral done with Youtube for the Wario game in the Wii. It's been uploaded just 10 days ago, and it's now gotten more than 2.1 million views.

Why is it so amazing? The whole concept of the viral was closely intertwined with the equity of the product being mentioned (which is a game): "Wario Shake it Up." And it also says something about Youtube, meaning they're becoming more experimental and creative in advertising on site. (check out this insightful Techcrunch article which talks about Youtube planning to monetize its homepage more)

I wouldn't want to give any more spoilers so just watch it. :) Here is a screenshot:

What the f**k is social media?

Digital marketing is closely intertwined with social media.

While conventional marketing is more a mass-communication endeavor, done via TV, radio or print, digital marketing is ideally a one-to-one and two-way activity, where the brand or the company offers personalized content for the consumer and the consumer can interact readily. The revolutions that are the internet and mobile technologies make this possible.

So, because of the democratization of voice, consumers can also much more freely talk about the brands they use (or hate or love). Social media or Web 2.0 enable that.

With that short introductory spiel, let me share with you a fascinating presentation I found in Slideshare which talks precisely how powerful social media is in the context of marketing.

In my opinion, at this stage though in the Philippines, social media is very difficult to harness. Let me know what you think, thanks!

What The F**K is Social Media?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmediamarketing marketing)