Pepsi Signs 52 Weeks Deal with Twitter

Pepsi signed the most extensive partnership a company ever made with Twitter. The global partnership will unfold over a 52 weeks period and will be coordinated with “Live for Now”, the current Pepsi campaign organizing pop concerts across the USA.

“This is the biggest initiative a marketer has done with Twitter to date,” said Adam Bain, Twitter’s president-global revenue. “It ranks as one of the smartest campaigns we’ve seen on the platform too. … This yearlong program takes full advantage of Twitter.”

Starting at the end of June, pop concerts will be held in small venues in the US and will be announced on Twitter one to two weeks in advance. Moreover, the concerts will be streamed live – Pepsi doesn’t need to make any change or invest in development in order to make it all possible. A fun part is that the micro-blogging platform users will be able to influence song choices at the concerts. Of course, that doesn’t mean all the songs played will be the public’s choice.

Another interesting thing included in the partnership is that the two brands will work together to determine trending topics related to music. Based on these topics, a short, weekly video digest, will be made and embedded on Pepsi’s Twitter page every Wednesday.

Last, but not least, and I’m sure it’s great news for any music fan, Pepsi will give away free music downloads via @Pepsi.

So the idea is simple: Pepsi will use Twitter’s ad products to draw attention to its campaign.

The partnership, I’m sure, is one that both parties need to go perfectly, as Pepsi is struggling to fight its competitors, while Twitter still needs to become profitable. It is indeed a long term partnership and time will tell if it was a good idea. The fact is that, if managed carefully, success could be obtained, primarily by Pepsi – see Runner’s World Twitter success example.