What’s next for marketers in the realm of social media, mobile, location, and digital video?
That’s what a room full of PepsiCo executives, digital strategists and brand managers tried to figure out earlier this week at the company’s headquarters in Purchase, NY, where 20 promising tech startups presented ideas for leveraging their products in future PepsiCo campaigns at PepsiCo10 (for which Mashable was a media sponsor).
The companies in attendance presented technologies that could change the way we shop for groceries, pay our bill at restaurants, watch television and even wake up in the morning. Here’s a look at them and how they see some of PepsiCo’s brands (which include Gatorade, Frito Lay and Quaker) utilizing their wares:
Changing the Way We Shop
While self-checkout has been a feature of many grocery stores for some time, AisleBuyer is looking to take it a step further by allowing people to use their smartphones to scan QR codes as they shop. The startup has designed a system in which shoppers could unlock coupons and finish transactions with their credit cards, all without waiting in line.
As you can imagine, there are some logistical hurdles that need to be overcome to make AisleBuyer’s concept a reality. Pushpins takes a slightly different approach, connecting QR code scanning to your existing loyalty cards. When you checkout, the coupons –- which increase the more you use PushPins -– are instantly credited via your loyalty card.
But those loyalty cards themselves might be changing face too. Mobestream Media and its Key Ring Rewards Card mobile apps let users convert their physical loyalty cards into digital ones, creating a virtual wallet of sorts that can be used at checkout.
Also playing in the checkout space is TableTop Media, a company that provides a self-checkout solution called the Ziosk to restaurants. With it, users can simply swipe their credit card when they’re ready to leave. The device also features content and games that users can interact with during their meal.
While TableTop Media looks to make paying for a meal quicker (it says it saves about four minutes on average), Evil Genius Designs wants to make your waits in line more entertaining. The company has a series of interactive games (often branded for sponsors) that are shown on huge screens at amusement parks and other places where lengthy lines are common.
Other companies looking to change the way we shop included QR code scanning technology ScanBuy (whose technology is currently being used in a Gulf cleanup initiative) and location-based reward startups MotiveCast and WeReward.
Last but not least, Zazu is looking to revolutionize the alarm clock, using its mobile apps to greet users when they wake up with news, their schedules, weather, and even traffic alerts, inserting ads for products along the way. You can see how it works in the video below:
Most of these companies share a common theme: providing consumers with an impulse to buy — whether in the form of coupons or other promotions — when they are (quite literally) close to the point of purchase. Of course, PepsiCo already has some of their own mobile initiatives underway, perhaps most notably its Pepsi Loot app, which rewards users for checking in to locations where Pepsi products are served.
New Social Media Plays
PepsiCo has garnered a lot of attention in the past year for some of its social media initiatives, like the Pepsi Refresh project (made possible in part by the company’s decision to forgo Super Bowl ads this year) and Dewmocracy, which let customers create a new flavor of Mountain Drew. Thus, it wasn’t surprising that the more social media-focused startups presenting devoted much of their pitches to ways PepsiCo could execute campaigns using their products.
Breakoutband and MyCypher looked to enhance Pepsi’s already-strong connection to the music world. The latter is a platform that enables aspiring hip hop artists to use their mobile phones to record tracks and share them with friends. The former is a RockBand-meets-Facebook-type application that lets users create their own songs with friends, including the beats, lyrics and vocals. The company envisions hosting an NCAA Tournament-style challenge presented by Pepsi, in which bands compete against each other to advance.
Moving to sports –- where PepsiCo’s Gatorade brand is the focus –- FanFeedr offers a web and mobile application that lets sports fans track their favorite teams and athletes. The company sees tie-ins with Gatorade’s extensive roster of athlete endorsers, as well as the potential to help drive ticket sales to venues where Pepsi is served, by way of knowing which teams its users like.
Pixable also sees a potential partnership with Gatorade, using its app to aggregate photos from friends on Facebook and other services like Flickr and Picasa to create branded mosaics. Staying with Facebook, RealGifts, a fbFund company, wants to build a branded online store where virtual PepsiCo products can be given to friends and redeemed for the real thing.
Finally, with every brand now likely looking to emulate the success of Old Spice’s recent video campaign, Tongal presented its crowdsourced approach to creating viral video. The company’s platform allows brands to initiate contests in which creatives and producers compete to create the best viral videos for that brand.
Interactive Television and Video Advertising
Is television about to experience a revolution in so-called “second screen” experiences, fueled by the growth of mobile and tablet computers? That’s what a number of startups at PepsiCo10 were betting on.
Miso, a self-described “Foursquare for TV,” lets users check in to television shows and earn rewards and badges the more they do it. The company sees itself aligning with television programs and brands like PepsiCo –- something Foursquare is already doing to an extent with a number of its media partnerships.
Spot411 is also looking to add social elements to TV viewing on the second screen, except it identifies what’s playing by listening to the audio of the programming, effectively checking in users on its own. Certain keywords in the programming could then trigger brand integrations. We recently wrote about the company and its partnership with Fox Home Entertainment.
Taking a slightly different approach to social television is i.tv, which is looking to aggregate conversations happening around shows. What makes its technology unique is the ability to pinpoint exact points within a show and align them with the relevant tweets and status updates, letting users experience the same conversations no matter what time they watch. The company sees potential tie-ins with messages from sponsors; for instance, one of Gatorade’s sponsored athletes could be part of the conversation during sporting events.
Two other companies are approaching the video space from an advertising perspective. BizGreet lets advertisers customize video messages based on user information such as name and location, while Affine Systems has developed technology that can identify people, products and other objects within video, giving advertisers an easier way to customize their campaigns.
A New Model for Big Company Innovation?
Ultimately, Pepsi will choose 10 of these companies with which to launch pilot projects (hence the name PepsiCo10). What we find interesting about the program –- and part of the reason we got involved –- is because it completely flips the model we’ve seen in social media over the past couple years, where brands tend to latch onto emerging startups only once they’ve reached a certain scale (although that is starting to shift, as we’ve seen with all of the partnerships with location-based startups).
The food and beverage giant is trying to get in early via Pepsico10, while also giving startups a huge opportunity to develop proof of concepts that they can take to other brands. The company is essentially betting that a proactive approach –- coupled with its ongoing investments in the digital media space — will give it a leg up on competitors as the next Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare-like startups emerge.
It will obviously to take time to see if that model works, although a number of other big companies are trying similar initiatives. During the event, GE’s Global Director of Marketing Communications and Digital Linda Boff shared some details and early results from her company’s Ecomagination Challenge, which is investing $200 million into new energy technologies. Similar to PepsiCo10, which saw about 500 applications stream in for its competition, Boff spoke of the overwhelming response GE has received, both in terms of startup submissions and the conversation happening online around some of the ideas.
Clearly, the demand is there on the startup side for opportunities to work with big brands to accelerate their ideas. The question is whether those big brands can successfully shed the bureaucracy that can often hold innovation back and implement projects in the incredibly quick-moving social media and technology world –- many of which might fail, but could ultimately become huge wins and competitive advantages.
