Pepsi Takes Summer Campaign Global with Foursquare

Pepsi has partnered with Foursquare to globalize the badge concept as part of its "Summer Time is Pepsi Time" campaign — you know, the one that has fun with "Coke's" Santa. Now, Foursquare check-ins are encouraging fans to unlock Pepsi's summer fun.

This isn’t Pepsi’s first partnership with Foursquare, as they first teamed for charity in December 2009, with a Christmas pledge drive to donate 4 cents to CampInteractive for New York-based check-ins.

This new campaign, which officially launched July 4th weekend, takes the action to designated locations including beaches, pools, parks, ballparks and stadia. Check-in at any three venues earns users badges and qualification for sweepstakes prizes. 

Pepsi's second summer 2011 spot, “Uncle Teddy,” previewed on its YouTube and Facebook pages July 3rd before debuting on TV America’s Got Talent.

The overt satirization of Coke’s iconic polar bear theme worked well: “Pepsi has been the #1 trending brand on Foursquare since July 3, and there were 1.2 million views of the "Uncle Teddy" video within the first 36 hours," reaching 1.56 million on July 11th.

This is the first time a major CPG brand has included Foursquare promotional messaging on its television, Facebook and Twitter messaging. Shiv Singh, PepsiCo Beverages' head of digital tells Marketing Daily, "We call it 'badge equity.”

During the July 4th weekend, Pepsi bought ad takeovers on Yahoo, AOL, and other online sites that redirected users to the "Uncle Teddy" spot and in turn to a Foursquare link, as well as in-store promotional collateral with QR codes linked to the campaign.

Last November, when Foursquare announced a partnership with PepsiCo in a pilot program that replaced "place" marketing with motivational social marketing, Fast Company wrote:

“Foursquare has also designed a unique vehicle for check-in rewards that is far less linear and ephemeral than traditional location-based reward programs. Rather than, say, earning a free coffee for becoming 'mayor' of Starbucks (or just giving away 10,000 pairs of free jeans like Facebook and Gap's one-off promo), Foursquare and PepsiCo have tailored rewards to user behavior, irrespective of in-store check-ins.”

Uncle Teddy and Santa are seasonal proof that rewards and humor trump place… anytime, anywhere.