2012 was the year for Pepsi to Live For Now and Deep Focus wanted to get the word out. Along with Pepsi and our partners, we transformed the brand’s social agenda to one that exuded Live For Now in every image, copy and conversation. We programmed Facebook, twitter and other social platforms with exclusive sponsored content. Pepsi livestreamed concerts from some of the world’s biggest recording artists and made them accessible exclusively through its social channels. We began a collaboration with OMD, Facebook and the Pepsi brand team to create a strategy to (re)define key performance indicators, double down on the creation of brand-building engaging content, and build a revolutionary process for implementing real-time native media buying. We had already out-engaged Pepsi’s number one competitor despite being significantly outspent (and "out-fanned"). Our new aim was to leverage and boost that out-engagement to bolster our reach and gain loyal fans to strengthen brand health. In a 30-day sprint, Deep Focus developed a rapid cadence of the kind of image-based branded content that had already made the brand an engagement leader on Facebook and twitter (our iconic "Harry Potter Can" appeared on twitter and subsequently USA Today in summer 2011). Our content was relevant and tapped into the cultural interests of our fans. We threw out polished images and traded them in for social quality photos. We optimized. We learned and listened to our community and geotargeted appropriately. Our agile content creation was supported in real-time with media support from OMD. All posts that reached a high, threshold virality rate were promoted using Facebook ads & stories, allowing Pepsi to reach even more of its fans with the best content. During the 30 days, Pepsi’s average post engagement skyrocketed 114%, while boosting our PTAT by 179% and reporting an increase in viral reach by 1133%—making Pepsi’s fans 40% more active on the page. Of the 46mm unique users, 31mm were tapped into through viral reach. That’s like, friends of friends of friends. To top it off, Pepsi gained 250,000 fans without any direct fan acquisition campaigns. That’s a whole lot of people who Live For Now. Shiv Singh, Global Head of Digital for Pepsi once said of the Moment Studio, Deep Focus’s social content production operation, "Moment Studio has helped Pepsi accomplish its goal of reaching 20 million Facebook users per week," demonstrating the effectiveness of this type of real-time, agile content marketing. By shifting to using a "creative newsroom" mindset in a completely new agency model, we got incredible results. After optimizing and testing different types of content we found: • The highest engaging posts resulted from interesting product shots, and posts that attached themselves to relevant pop culture events • Genuine, social-quality images outperform over-produced and staged images. • Engaging photos also need equally engaging copy to match, and get the highest engagement The success of the new process is in the numbers. At the end of the 30-day test, Pepsi’s Facebook page had garnered: • 6x the engagement rates of our competitor • A 114% jump in average post engagement • 179% boost in "People Talking About" on Pepsi’s Facebook page • A 1133% jump in Viral Reach • 250,000 new fans without a dedicated acquisition campaign • 46 million unique users reached • Increased fan recall of the Pepsi Live for Now campaign
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