Welcome 2010!

So long 2009 – I am certain that many people are happy to see it go.

Personally it has been an interesting few weeks. A couple weeks of being sick reminds me how crappy daytime TV is (and most television for that matter), and how slowly time passes when you have nothing to do and feel poorly.
In the end, I read a few books, read lots of magazines and even spent a bit of time on the internet although I admit that caused a bit of eye strain. My fascination with technology persists however, with particular interest in looking at how companies are changing the scope of their advertising to encompass social media opportunities. Perhaps an extreme example can be found in Pepsi who have decided to forgo advertising during the Super Bowl this year and instead are spending the money to develop a social media campaign
The campaign appears to be tied to a Pepsico social responsibility plan…something to do with making communities better. The article does not really describe the concept in any detail but combining the media trends with the corporate worlds new found marketing of social responsibility programs seems to be the focus. It would be interesting to know if the strategy is successful. I would suspect the only way we will know is to look at the advertisers for next years Super Bowl.
As an interesting sidebar to this idea is to consider the whole notion of social responsibility for corporations and how we got to where we are today. I believe that somewhere shortly after the movie An Inconvenient Truth there began a demand that large companies look at their environmental impact and improve. In truth, I am not sure that the public demanded it so much as marketing departments decided it was a good thing to promote. Born from this was the “Sustainability Report” which may have started as an environmental commitment statement but now will likely contain a very brief overview of recycling programs and reduction of carbon output with a large section on social responsibility.
Since when did being a good corporate citizen become the leverage for a media campaign. Has this always been the case? Also, has this served to divert our attention from issues of the environment?
Cheers and have a great day,
George