Oh brand managers, where art thou? Apparently Pepsi didn’t read my earlier post on why brands move so fast on damage control. Maybe they should. Why? Because they need to move pretty damn quick to soothe the Yankee Fans they pissed off with their promotion of giving away free Yankee tickets and Pepsi-Cola products. Call it the anti-promotion.
In an Adage post titled, Pepsi Promotion Ends With Chants of ‘Pepsi Sucks’ Pepsi shows what happens when brand managers and product marketers fail to plan. They can plan to FAIL! can you say #PepsiFail?
Watch how quick this anti-promotion spreads virally on Twitter and the blogosphere. Brand managers, have you learned anything yet?
Direct Marketing Observations 
This was absolutely ridiculous. How could you run a campaign without having all the tickets lined up?
The Pepsi Brand is tarnished, but this was likely the fault of a PR firm that didn’t get the details right.
Even if they didn’t have the tickets in hand TODAY, they could have given vouchers and taken names of those that were in line to assure they got the tickets.
When planning events, campaigns, slogans, etc… As public relations professionals, we have a responsibility to all of the people involved to make sure we do it right.
Completely agree with what you said. Look at how fast the Dominos President created his video. Companies are starting to get it – I know Pepsi will respond but will it be tonight? Tomorrow? Probably tomorrow I’d guess.
I first saw the video on Break.com – where it was posted on the homepage last night. Since then it has been removed! Whats the deal!?!?!
The key will be how quick they respond, if they respond. Some brands-big brands-take a “it won’t hurt us attitude”. So we’ll see.
Quite a week for brands wasn’t it?
lol, yeah, tell me about it. Lots of big brand PR crisis management going on these days. In Pepsi’s case, instead of trying to minimize the story, Pepsi needs to apologize and turn this from a bad PR event to a good one. Its definitely possible!