I also think that we are going to be seeing a LOT of social media integration which is not dialogue based. I think the evangalists in the business (and no, I don’t mean you, Jane) are going to object vehemently to this, but after a while, when the dust settles, it will find an appropriate level.

But I think what people object to is the lack of dialogue. The fact that Pepsi themselves aren’t present. You bring up the comparison with Danske Bank, and while their ‘meningssite’ might be filtered (I actually don’t think it is), they at least respond to some of the criticism posted by their users. Now before you say anything, I agree. It’s hard to respond to some of the ignorant ‘Pepsi sucks’ tweets, but a next step might be actual presence by the company.

I do think it was a bold move not to filter, or let me rephrase that, I think it would be a horrible move to filter, and it would indeed make the site feel gimmicky.

And who is to say that the integration you’ve got going now can’t be an integral part in campaigns to come? I can absolutely see you activating the crowd for, say, competitions or product development or what not, using the existing set-up.

Also, there might actually be pretty dedicated Pepsi-fans out there (I remember some of my peers religiously collecting Coke-gear in my younger days), and to them, coming back for the latest tweets and – especially – videos and pictures, does represent real value.

How ever to return to the real problem – why should pepsi have a communication website at all? Why not only make campaigns where the users are at (I know it’s easy to say facebook – so I will). I know It’ll be difficult measuring such a campaign the same way you can measure the performance of your site, but that doesn’t justify a site.

First of all, it’s not a “gimmick” of some sorts. We really did some thinking relating to how we could integrate social media on the new pepsimax.dk and get the brand to “eye-level” if you will. Furthermore, who visits pepsimax.dk anyway in their free will? No Pepsi-produced content we could think of would persuade people to visit the site voluntarily.

So we thought: why not let people drive the traffic themselves? And let people have their say while they’re at it? That’s one of the reasons we integrated Facebook Connect on the site, to let the traffic come from below with true and honest content and not try to come up with some sugarcoated flypaper-scheme ourselves. Give me a user’s opinion about a brand anytime instead of a PR-coated message.

It’s a big, bold step for a company like Pepsi to take, so kudos to them – really. Totally uncensored, unfiltered content (well, filtered with “pepsi” keywords, but you know what I mean). Let’s see Danske Bank or even Coke do something like that.

On our side of things, we’re still trying to figure out how to use the new social media technologies to people’s (and obviously Pepsi’s) benefits. This is only version 1.0. We’d definitely like to hear your opinions on how we could integrate better. I’ve seen a lot of people write that the site is “cheap” and has no benefit – I certainly don’t agree with that. And I’d like to hear from the critics how they think social media should (or should not) be used commercially, instead of just sounding the bullhorn and shouting about how lame and unrelevant the site is (did I just repeat myself there? I really want to hear your opinion! ).