Pepsi opens doors to Tongal and crowdsourcing.
PepsiCo announced the companies selected for participation in the inaugural PepsiCo10, a partnership with 10 start-up companies to activate pilot programs in digital media and social marketing, and selected Tongal as a Social Media & Marketing innovator. As the only crowdsourced company in the program, Tongal will be partnering with Pepsi and their brands.
The PepsiCo10 launched in June as an open call for emerging technologies to partner with PepsiCo. The incubator program searched for already launched small media and tech companies in the following four categories: Social media and marketing, mobile marketing, place-based and retail experiential marketing, and digital video and gaming.
The inaugural program received over 500 applicants that PepsiCo narrowed down to 70. Before trimming down to the 10 finalists, these 70 applicants were required to submit a three minute video explaining their service and what they can do for Pepsi. In true crowdsourcing fashion, Tongal turned to their community to crowdsourced the introduction. Several members held up a Pepsi product and said, “Hi, I’m Tongal.”
We’re really hyper-conscious of practicing what we preach. If we’re going to make a video we should not just turn the camera on us, instead we should use the community.
-James DeJulio, President, Tongal
DeJulio spoke with the Daily Crowdsource about the honor of being selected into the PepsiCo10 and Tongal’s own use of crowdsourcing. It became very apparent that Tongal is a firm believer in crowdsourcing for both its community and Tongal’s own development. DeJulio informed the Daily Crowdsource, “We’ve used TopCoder frequently in the development and we use our own community for our marketing efforts.”
Details of Pepsi’s partnership with Tongal are yet to be revealed, however, we’re speculating Pepsi will be using Tongal to crowdsource marketing content in the form of video creation.
The PepsiCo10 has allowed Tongal to be considered a vendor for Pepsi, something otherwise unattainable. ”Believe me,” DeJulio remarked. ”We’ve tried to get past the gatekeepers of the major soft drink companies. Pepsi opening their doors to us has allowed us to showcase our crowdsourcing platform to a Fortune 500 company.”
Pepsi’s involvement with the 10 companies is not an investment approach, but rather an engagement approach. Pepsi will be buying into each company & potentially using each technology on a trial basis.