Two campaigns ran on Facebook in the same January week. One was a viral status-update meme asking women to post the colour of their bra for breast cancer awareness. The other was Vitaminwater Connect — a Coca-Cola product crowdsourced through a Facebook application that asked the brand's fans to vote on flavour, packaging, and name. Different sectors, different intent, same surface. Together they say something about where brand marketing is in 2010.
The physical and the virtual arena are now the same arena. Facebook is no longer a young consumer's diversion. It is where a Fortune 500 beverage company launches product and where a national cancer foundation gets awareness it did not pay for.
The Bra Colour Meme
The chain started in late October on a friend-to-friend basis and reached critical mass on Facebook through the second week of January. Women updated their status with a single word — the colour of their bra — and a private message to friends explaining what it meant. Susan G. Komen for the Cure picked up the traffic but did not start the campaign and could not steer it. There was no central organiser, no fundraising mechanism attached, and no measurable dollar lift.
What it did do is prove a point. A cause message on Facebook can travel without a brief, a budget, or a brand. The lesson for nonprofits and the foundations that fund them is that the platform now rewards the message that is shareable in a single line. The lesson for the corporate communications departments watching it is harder. If a cause can spread without you, your brand can become a story without you.
Vitaminwater Connect
Coca-Cola acquired Energy Brands, the parent company of Vitaminwater, in 2007 for $4.1 billion. The brand has roughly a million fans on Facebook — one of the largest brand pages of any beverage on the platform. For Connect, the company built a Facebook application and asked those fans to choose the flavour profile (black cherry-lime), the colour, and elements of the packaging language: words like "friend request," "untag," and "status" printed on the bottle.
Strip the novelty away and Vitaminwater Connect is a marketing campaign that built a product. The fans did not run R&D — Coca-Cola did. What the fans did was sign their name to the result. A million people now feel a claim of authorship on a bottle they will buy at the bodega in March. That is the real ROI.
Pepsi Refresh
The bigger bet of the same season belongs to Pepsi. The company pulled its Super Bowl ad spend — the first time in twenty-three years — and put roughly $20 million into the Pepsi Refresh Project, a Facebook-anchored grants programme that asks the public to vote on community causes worth funding. The first round opens this month.
Two things are worth watching. First, whether the campaign earns Pepsi the share-of-conversation that a Super Bowl spot would have. Second, whether Pepsi rebuilds the Super Bowl line in 2011. A cause budget and a paid-media budget are not the same budget, and the company that proves it can swap them is going to change every CMO's planning cycle.
What These Three Campaigns Have in Common
A single Facebook surface — the Page, the status update, the application — used as the primary distribution point.
No traditional press release as the originating moment. The campaigns started where the audience already was.
A request for participation, not a request for attention. The bra meme asks you to post. Connect asks you to vote. Refresh asks you to nominate.
No measurable sales lift yet. All three are awareness, affinity, and activation plays. Whether they convert remains the question every CMO is going to ask in the second quarter.
What the PR Function Should Take From This
Three things, in order. First, the brand's Facebook Page is now a press surface. Treat it with the same discipline as the newsroom. Second, the cause-marketing budget and the paid-media budget have started to compete for the same dollar. The communications team has to be in the room when that trade is made, because it is a positioning decision before it is a media decision. Third, the campaigns that travel on Facebook do not look like advertising. They look like an invitation. Brands that publish invitations on Facebook are going to outperform brands that publish advertising on Facebook for the next several quarters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did the bra colour meme raise money for breast cancer? Not directly. Komen reported a traffic lift to its site. There was no fundraising mechanism built into the meme itself, and that is the structural lesson — distribution without a conversion path leaves money on the table.
Is Vitaminwater Connect actually going to sell? Modestly, by Coca-Cola's standards. The product is the souvenir of the campaign. The campaign is the asset.
Will Pepsi do this again next year? The Refresh structure will continue. Whether Pepsi pulls the Super Bowl spend a second time is the open question.
What does this mean for a brand without a million fans? Build the audience first. Cause and crowdsource campaigns require an existing audience to seed them. There is no shortcut.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
