Long Foundation website is back up & Pepsi tries cause-related marketing big-time (instead of half-time)

For those trying to complete an online application or LOI at the Thomas J. Long Foundation, the website is back up and functional this morning.

New style of corporate philanthropy being explored by Pepsi, who took big-bucks advertising budgets and tried cause-related marketing to win consumers by having a local, not a national, impact with their outreach activities. Pepsi Refresh is interactive, allowing participants to vote via Facebook for philanthropic ideas for Pepsi. Innovative, wave-of-future kind of thing. Pepsi is measuring response and analyzing whether this new approach will be better for them than Super Bowl ads. Prediction: it will be better.