• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 17, 2010

In the panel on paid and earned media, one of the questions arising is whether a brand has to be considered cool in th first place to launch a successful social media campaign, with Pepsi brands as an example. Would Pepsi's paid or earned media projects have taken off if they were pushing plumbing parts? Kristine Shine of PopSugar Media suggested Pepsi wasn't that cool to begin with, but by attaching the brand to environmental causes or people doing good, the company has been able to boost the brand's cachet.

Technorati's Richard Jalichandra said ads for any product or service can be sexy if targeted at the right audience, giving the example of promoting IT news and blog-related posts to IT industry people on Technorati. "They all wanted to see conversations about IT security popping on the Internet." Tom Troja of Social Symphony pointed to a social campaign the company had done for Barefoot Wines involving beach rescue and clean-up and tapping into customers environmental interests. But a big "boring" competitor like Gallo could adopt the same approach to engage people with social efforts that tie into things they care about.