Image via Wikipedia

I, as well as some other folks, have been thinking alot lately about influencer lists. Top 50 this, most influential that, etc. Are they a sham, do they have some value, what is the constant fascination and desire to be on one of these lists?

Then, yesterday, Pepsi sent out promo kits to 25 “influential” personalities in the social media space, to drum up discussion of Pepsi’s new logos. Now, certainly, there aren’t Pepsi influencers in social media. And, there’s no saying that Charlene Li, Chris Brogan, Peter Shankman and others have any interest in, or even drink Pepsi. In fact, I’d reason that perhaps one of the reasons these folks received these packages has to do with their personal/professional relationship with Pepsi’s new global social media strategist, my friend Bonin Bough. Or, their relationship with Steve Rubel, who’s PR firm does work with Pepsi.

So, does influence matter here, or really, is this more about personal connection? And, other than the blip from blog posts, flickr pix and tweets from yesterday, what will Pepsi gain from the experience? They’ve got 100+ subscribers to their pepsi cooler Friendfeed group. What’s that doing for them? Is the goal good will, warm fuzzies from the online community?

Thinking about this reminds me of when I went to pitch a measurement account to Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. Talking about influencer marketing when you’re pitching people who hawk french fries is, well, just a bit silly. There are no french fry influencers. The only people who might regularly talk about Burger King french fries are the food pundits, and they are not saying nice things about those french fries. So, trying to influence them as a way to sell more french fries isn’t a good strategy.

Pepsi has a deep challenge — like other mass market producers and big brands — how can they be highly targeted in social media, which is all about building connections, when they pitch a product with mass appeal? We’ve heard about many of the experiments that larger brands are making in social media, many of them failures or showing few tangible results. Smaller companies seem to do better, at least anecdotally, because they don’t have the scalability problem of big brands.

Maybe Pepsi will figure out the magic bullet in all this for the rest of the big brand marketers. Then again, maybe its just a cool experiment.

Mass market companies will continue to be challenged by the social media need (desire? opportunity?) to go small scale and targeted. It’s not a model they understand or are comfortable with.