The Pepsi Refresh site is similar in functionality to other crowdsourced idea generating efforts such as Dell’s IdeaStorm (which is run on top of Salesforce.com) and the type of sites created by UserVoice, although it is not clear who created the site on behalf of Pepsi. I have contacted Pepsi to find out and will update if I hear back from them.

Regardless, this is not a good way to launch a massive social marketing campaign aimed at fostering warm-and-fuzzy feelings towards Pepsi. Hopefully, it can fix things quickly and recover because it’s actually a pretty good idea if Pepsi can get past the technical and privacy snafus.

By turning Facebook’s tagging system into a contest, Ikea achieved one of those elusive social media goals — they got their campaign to go viral. For the cost of a few items, the company raised awareness, engaged with consumers and helped publicize the launch of a new store.

To advertise the launch of Ikea’s new store in Malmo Sweden, Ikea’s ad team, Forsman & Bodenfors, “kidnapped the most popular function” of Facebook. They created a profile for the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson, and over a two week period the team uploaded 12 pictures of store showrooms to his profile page.

Swedish Facebook members were encouraged to add Gordon as a friend and tag themselves to products in the showroom. The first person to tag an item then won that Ikea product.

Facebook users that tagged themselves then shared the action with their friends via their news feed. But also, people excited about the contest publicized it themselves. The pictures spread to thousands of profile pages, newsfeeds and links.

Beyond the creative, it only cost Ikea a few free items. And by using Facebook’s existing functionality, Ikea and its marketing team were able to achieve that elusive social media goal — consumer engagement and promotion without the cost of an expensive TV, print or digital campaign.