Over the holiday period Pepsi announced its decision not to invest in television advertising during the NFL Super Bowl game. Instead it will plough $20 million into a new cause-related marketing project Pepsi Refresh, which will award grants for community projects proposed and selected by the public.

The news has done little damage to the Super Bowl’s reputation, even with big spenders FedEx and General Motors also pulling out. Dr Pepper has stepped up to advertise during the game for the first time this year, and Doritos (owned by PepsiCo’s Lays division) repeating its competition to chose one of six user-generated ads to run during the game. Though overall the creativity within the spots has become somewhat lacklustre of late, to many brands the sheer volume of eyeballs is still worth the price-tag.

But what of Pepsi? Some have called this move bold, but is it really? The Superbowl television ads produce instant profile, but are hardly engaging. It costs an average of $2.5 million for a 30-second spot during this year’s NFL championship game, and that doesn’t even include the cost in producing it. Even one of the biggest brands in the world must look at that in a different light during this somewhat grey financial period.

So is this new focus on cause-related marketing actually a money saving effort, or an attempt to capitalise on the trend for getting users engaged by giving them a sense of power? ‘Doing good’ is still perceived to be excellent trait for a brand, regardless of the motive.

There’s every possibility that this could just be a very cynical view of the new project, but Pepsi could have teamed up with any number of the marketplaces that already exist to do just this – like Betterplace. Pepsi obviously want to take full credit for the idea, but if it sends $20 million worth of funding out to people who need it, does it really matter in the end?