Have you voted for a Pepsi Refresh Project? Check out Elastic Park which needs your vote!
February 25, 2010
By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
I usually write here on Wednesdays, but Yvonne really wanted to get word out yesterday about Fotobabble, a new app, so I got bumped a day. Here's my post:
The Pepsi Refresh Project
got quite a bit of buzz around the Super Bowl for the fact that Pepsi
decided not to run a Super Bowl ad. I wrote about the Super Bowl and
Pepsi in this post
and many others bloggers and columnists did as well. The program was
just beginning and as I said then, this is one social media marketing
initiative that I want to follow.
Well a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet with someone who currently has a project being voted on in the program. To review, the Pepsi Refresh Project originally launched on Jan. 13 and invites people to submit their ideas online for their projects that will refresh their communities to make a better world. February has been the first month that visitors to the site could start voting on projects that have been submitted. Pepsi estimates they will fund thousands of projects spending in excess of $20 million dollars with the hope to start a movement where others will begin funding community projects in the same manner.
The specific project that I'm referring to is called "Elastic Park" which was submitted in the Arts and Culture category by Larry Moss of Airigami, LCC.
Larry is an artist who builds balloon sculptures, so this project is
basically a Jurassic Park made out of balloons! His goals are to
demonstrate what can be accomplished by working together and building
community through art, science and "pop" culture. His plan is to build
an exhibit at Exploration Place
in Wichita, Kansas that will serve as a template for a national museum
tour. To accomplish this he will need to recruit 100's of community
volunteers which will hopefully result in 1,000's of visitors all
learning about pre-history and art in a very unique way. Check it out:
Larry has displayed his work in 12 countries, and has been recognized by the Associated Press, CNN, Smithsonian Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and Ripley's Believe It or Not! He has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and NBC's "Today." He created Balloon Manor here in Rochester last Fall, which was a haunted house for Halloween all in balloons. Also this past December he participated in the DARPA Network Challenge which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Internet and the way social networking now plays a role in communications. For that he had cupcake balloon structures flying over various major cities in the U.S. including New York.
February is now winding down with only a few days left for voting. What Larry told me that I didn't realize at first is that visitors can come back every day to vote. So those projects that are associated with a large organization have the advantage of sending out reminders to people to go back and vote again. Therefore, there does seem to be a disadvantage for the small biz or entrepreneur.
So please vote here for Larry and Elastic Park. He's ranked #18 today, down from #15 from when I met with him. The good news is that if he doesn't win this month he's received enough votes to come back for a second try. February winners from all six categories will be announced on Monday, March 1.
Never voted for such projects. This will be the first vote which i will be casting lolz.
Posted by: Andy Morgan | February 27, 2010 at 02:23 PM