Now, as we’re just oiling the gears , the first major cause marketing program of the year has kicked off, courtesy of Pepsi. Dubbed the Pepsi Refresh Project, the effort has begun accepting ideas for community projects, and setting aside a Super Bowl-sized sum for funding the best of the best as voted on by the public.

Initial evidence points to a home run here (despite a slight stumble out of the gate).  A recent study from Cone reports that a majority of Americans are keen to support causes online, especially if the support isn’t a direct financial contribution. This is exactly how Pepsi is playing it, backing the funding of winning projects with dollars traditionally spent on Super Bowl advertising.

“Eighty-five percent of respondents say new media provides them (Americans) with an opportunity to learn about new issues, and a similar number (80%) believe it provides another way to support their favorite causes. They champion important issues in a variety of ways, including advocacy (36%) (such as forwarding a message to friends), personal behavior change (34%) and purchasing cause-related products (23%).”
-2009 CONE CONSUMER NEW MEDIA STUDY

Cause marketing is nothing new, but innovations in crowdsourcing has allowed Pepsi, a brand not necessarily built from the ground up to be socially conscious, to take a step back and empower consumers to make a difference on an individual and personal level.

It’s a program we’re watching here at Affinitive. What are your first impressions of the Pepsi Refresh Project?

As the new year hits full swing, we’re all in search of our list of hopeful (and overly ambitious?) resolutions for what the new year will bring. Eat healthier. Exercise more. Work hard. Play harder. My list seems to contain some variation of this every year.  So what will the new year bring to Social Marketing?

Many people believe this is going to be the “Year of Social Marketing” – a build upon 2009, which seemed to be the year of the Tweet, that catapulted everyone from @Oprah to your favorite brand (well, that’s one of mine) into the conversational micro-blogging social sphere.

Kicking down the new year’s door into the “year of Social Marketing” is a likely (and savvy) player, Pepsi, who has announced (to little surprise those familiar with their great marketing team) that they are going to forgo Super Bowl ads and instead utilize funds within the social space with their cause-oriented “Refresh” initiative. They know what we here at Affinitive believe – developing relationships with your consumers, your real consumers,  while providing them with a unique consumer value is what the landscape is dictating to be the strategy that is resonating.

We’re a fickle bunch of consumers. We want the best deal.  We want our voices to be heard. We want answers to our questions shortly after asking them. We expect to be engaged. The rules of acquiring our attention (and business) have quite simply, changed. We aren’t wowed by a Pepsi commercial starring Britney Spears, we’re wowed by a tweeting Britney Spears, sharing her behind the scenes tour photos with us directly (well, maybe it’s actually her, some of the time?) We want the information, straight from the source, we want to be on the inside.

While many have a hard time quite classifying exactly where social marketing starts and stops both from an execution stand point (who does what internally? is it PR? is it digital?) and from a platform perspective (no, Social Marketing isn’t just Facebook and Twitter) – it is hard to argue that it is truly a marketing REVOLUTION. The biggest strategic and tactical trend to emerge in quite some time.

So what does all this mean? This means that in 2010 -Social Marketing will continue to grow, and take a new shape – The REVOLUTION will be Socialized. Cheesy? Yes. But true nonetheless.

Social Marketing will stop being limited by many brands’ fear of execution or by traditional boundaries -  it will evolve beyond its current bucketed limitation (i.e., all videos should be on YouTube, you develop your own branded community under a navigational tab that says  “community”). It will head more mobile, the ever present question of ROI will begin to be answered and standards will be set, unethical players will be eliminated, and CRM will take center stage. This amongst many other things.

Ravit Lichtenberg from UStrategy.com over at Read Write Web already articulated all of this in his blog post “10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010“ far better than I ever could.

I suggest anyone looking to get a grasp of where “Social Media” could head in 2010 – head that way. Although I’m of the camp that believes it’s Social Marketing not Social Media, Social is the operative word and essentially it’s the same meat & potatoes.

Key takeaways from his post that I believe will ring true in Twenty-Ten:

• Mobile Mobile Mobile MOBILE (and not those pesky SMS to win campaigns…)
• Brands will establish a social marketing footprint (cohesive = key)
• It’s all about the ladies  (my mom has a lot of time on her hands, does yours?)
• Offline and online will continue to be integrated (and Ravit thinks in some bizarre ways, I’m not totally sold on that)
• Social Marketing will no longer be constricted by existing platforms & technology (think hybrids, emerging mediums/tools, augmented reality, anyone?)
• ROI ROI ROI ( the first question any marketer gets asked always ladders back to this. While I’m unsure a universal metric will magically emerge, I think key WAYS to measure some of them will)
• Your brand can’t afford NOT to join the Social Revolution (everyone else is already a few steps ahead of you, if you haven’t)

So there you had it. Bravo, Ravit. A fantastic read.

Social Marketing – although still two very buzzworthy words – is a true marketing revolution.  It is changing the way consumers discover new brands, learn impactful information about brands, and ultimately, how they determine which brand to purchase.

The best way to develop true relationships with your consumers that will foster loyalty and retention is to Socialize.