After 23 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Super Bowl ads, one of the world’s biggest brands broke new ground in 2010 by opting out of the Super Bowl and pouring 1/3 of
its annual marketing budget into a cause-driven social marketing campaign called "The Refresh Project."
The Refresh Project featured a pledge from Pepsi to hand out more than $20 million in grants to do-good projects in six categories and in what has since been coined “crowd-sourced philanthropy” (the audience voted on who got the grants). Sadly, the campaign was pulled after 10 months due to fraud allegations and slipping market share -- yet the influence of The Refresh Project as a remarkable example of behemoth brands committing more dollars (and brain cells) to digital and social media continues to be felt.