Who knew the link between money, marketing and measurement would create such a buzz? I arrived to an over-packed room to attend my first South by Southwest panel, “Marketing Budgets Have Gone Social – Is It Working?” Kathy Baughman, principal at ComBlu and panel moderator, kicked off the session with a Tweet-worthy quote, “If you don’t have social scar tissue, you’re not trying hard enough.” And let’s face it – she’s right, especially when it comes to nebulous and hard-to-measure ROI. This tough topic was addressed by a panel that included our own SVP and Chief Communication Officer Julie Hamp, along with Kris Narayanan from Samsung and David Witt, formerly of General Mills, who recently moved to Hershey’s. Everyone emphasized both the difficulty – and the extreme need – to measure and prove what marketing can do in social circles. Funding and measurement are... Read more

After months of planning, nine PepsiCo colleagues and I are bound for Austin to experience and cover PepsiCo’s presence and engagement at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Tex. Social media – in fact, any technology – has always fascinated me. I’ve always considered myself somewhat “tech savvy.” However, last week as our digital team trained the Conn3ct team – mostly passionate Millennials – on Twitter, Instragram and other tools, tap, tap, tapping away on their smart phones, I was trying to keep up. But step it up, I must, since I need to model what I’m preaching these days. One of my major business goals for this year is to encourage our PepsiCo employees to share their pride in PepsiCo and our Performance with Purpose vision with friends and family on their social networks. Our team has created voluntary, online training to educate employees... Read more