I’m not the only one questioning Pepsi’s Unfriendlyfeed
Dan Thornton | December 3, 2008
A few days ago I wrote about the efforts by Pepsi and Coca-Cola to engage their consumers in different ways – Pepsi chose social media, whilst Coca-Cola chose a loyalty reward scheme. And yet they are both making mistakes big enough for me to post ‘How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy‘.
It’s not surprising that other people are also questioning the policy, like Todd Jordan with his post ‘Pepsi – Are you listening‘ (Found when he mentioned it on Twitter – @Tojosan). Interestingly his post appears to have been picked up by Josh Karpf from Pepsi, commenting as Josh.
It’s good that that someone at Pepsi has picked up on the post, but Josh is repeating the same things many people have already heard:
‘We’re listening, Todd–and making efforts to do just what you are saying.’
‘We need to find a better way to aggregate and share fans’ passion for the company.’
‘As for the Friendfeed room, it was never intended to live as a standalone communications platform for PepsiCo. It’s one of many “outposts” we have launched, and intend to launch going forward as part of our ongoing digital plans. We are actively taking in feedback from across the web and starting to join in on conversations outside of the room, which you may have noticed.’
‘We do need to moderate comments to some extent to make sure profanity is removed. However, we do not moderate at all based on things we do or don’t like.’
‘We are going to introduce more new voices into the room from inside and outside the company very soon. I agree that we need to be more engaged in fan-based communities beyond ones that are launched inside the company. You surely understand that this is a first step for us; and we are moving towards becoming far more open, inclusive, and “closer” to our consumers.’
All pleasant enough, and I’m sure Josh is a nice enough guy. And with people like Steve Rubel involved, you’d hope they’ve got an idea of where they can improve.
But it really doesn’t take that much effort to start making improvements right away – like opening the Friendfeed Room up to everyone. I don’t want more voices inside and outside the company. I want all voices by anyone who has anything interesting to say – and that’s what Pepsi should want too!
They can still moderate, either pre, or preferably post comment. But how on earth do they expect to get closer to a community by dictating strict topics for discussion once every few days? It’s like walking up to the community and shout “You will engage, You will engage, You will engage!” over and over and over.
Funnily enough, although the FriendFeed room is quiet, Twitter has 11 messages mentioning Pepsi in the last 20 minutes via Twitter Search. And in the whole front page there’s not a single message containing profanity.
None of page 2 or 3 either. Mainly because people are treating each other like adults!
And look Pepsi! Look at a blog search for Pepsi and Friendfeed!
- Pepsi are you listening? by Todd Jordan
- How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy by Me!
- Why blogger outreach can fail by Virginia Nussey
- Pepsi’s social media challenge by Jason Lee Miller (focusing on the lack of new suggestions generated)
- Pepsi asked for my thoughts by CC Chapman
Responding in the comments of the first or second post is fine, but by the third and fourth I’d be looking to make some immediate changes. After all links 5 and 6 were posted on November 12, 2008. Mine was on November 28th, and Todd’s was today. That’s almost a month without any obvious changes.
Maybe it’s time?
Pepsi can by schnaars (CC licence)
