Advertisers Make Big Plans for Super Bowl

via USA Today

Whether it's beer, cars or corn chips, the usual suspects are lining up to make the 50th Super Bowl more than a game to remember -- at least when it comes to the ads.

With the Super Bowl now almost two week away, advertisers are starting to give a peek at what they’ve got planned. They have a lot at stake as they prepare to drain their marketing budgets for what is perennially most expensive promotion opportunity of the year. Creative directors are angling to make an impact -- whether it's through a laugh or a pull of the heartstrings.

"It's brand strategy, pure and simple," says Erika Napolitano, a branding consultant for RHW Media in Chicago. "It's emotional, entertaining and most of all -- and more than any other ad buy you make for the year -- it has to have a clear message."

That's because so much is at stake: When the NFL championship airs on CBS on Feb. 7,  advertisers will vie for the attention of an audience that last year had a viewership of 114 million, making it one of the most watched telecasts

ever.

With so many eyes on the small screen, companies are willing to pay millions of dollars for 30 mere seconds of air time.

The average rate for a 30-second Super Bowl ad has risen by 76% during the past decade -- reaching $4.4 million in 2015, according to Kantar Media. It’s the priciest commercial time on TV.

"The demand for the Super Bowl has been extraordinary," CBS CEO Les Moonvessaid during a UBS conference last month, without disclosing specific price tags for this year's ad inventory.  "We've sold most of the spots for very, very high prices."

A wide range of companies have lined up for this year's action. But most haven't revealed their strategy or the actual ad. They are starting to be divulged, and one of the Super Bowl's most familiar advertisers is among the first to reveal some of the spots it has in mind.

Anheuser Busch, the Super Bowl’s exclusive beer sponsor for the 28th straight year, scooped up three and a half minutes of air time to run five ads for four brands:  Bud Light, Budweiser, Shock Top and Michelob Ultra.

“For us this is extremely important because we use the Super Bowl to make statements about our brands, to kick off the year with a vengeance,'' Jorn Socquet, Anheuser Busch’s vice president of marketing, said during a media preview Thursday.

Budweiser’s iconic Clydesdales will once again make an appearance.  Michelob ULTRA's 30-second ad will be its first in the Big Game since 2010. Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer will bring plenty of laughs to a “Bud Light Party" in an ad supporting that brand. And Shock Top, an unfiltered wheat beer, will feature comic T.J. Miller as its “unfiltered spokesperson’’  in a spot that will mark its Super Bowl debut.

Watch the Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer teaser here.

Soft drinks and sweet snacks will also be advertised, with as well as healthier fare such as the avocados from Mexico brand.

Skittles and Butterfinger will be in the big game, as well as Mountain Dew's Kickstart beverage.

Skittles'  ad will star rocker Steven Tyler, and marks the first time a celebrity has been part of Skittles’ “Taste the Rainbow’’ ad campaign.

And, as usual, a bevy of car companies will be represented -- more than nine so far. Among the brands planning one spot or more include Acura, Audi, Buick, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mini and Toyota. Some, like Buick, are first timers.

All will be watching closely to see if they get their money's worth.

"The Super Bowl has become the Ad Bowl," Napoletano says. "Ads have become a culture in and of themselves."

Pepsi Max's NFL Vending Machine Asks Brits to Show American-Style Enthusiasm

via Creativity Online

More Brits are getting into American football these days -- but can they match the enthusiasm of American fans? Pepsi Max decided to experiment.

To support the NFL International Series matches at London's Wembley late last month, the brand, an NFL sponsor, created a vending machine where fans paid with enthusiasm -- encouraging the normally more reserved Brits to let go in American-style passion for NFL. The "Oomph-o-meter" spoke to fans entering the event and encouraged them to jump up and down, shout, and do high-fives and chest bumps and gave out free Pepsi Max to those who performed best. Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO created the stunt, and film.

 Watch Brits get free Pepsi Max in return for "Oomph" here.

NBA Ditches Coke for Pepsi After a 30-Year Partnership

via Ad Week

Pepsi gets beverage rights for all 4 major sports leagues

By severing Coca-Cola's nearly 30-year relationship with the NBA, PepsiCo will achieve a clean marketing sweep of the four major professional sports leagues this fall.

Under the five-year deal, PepsiCo will become the official food and beverage company of the NBA, WNBA, NBA D-League and USA Basketball and will control beverage rights for the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA. Coke will not be an NBA sponsor for the first time since 1986.

By adding the NBA, Pepsi definitely wins this round of the cola wars, said John Sicher, editor of Beverage Digest.

"In any marketing tool chest, there are lots of different tools—player deals, big deals," Sicher said. "Today, PepsiCo took over one important tool in the sports marketing tool chest."

Other factors drove the deal, which covers both the U.S. and China, according to Emilio Collins, the NBA's evp of global marketing partnerships.

During negotiations, PepsiCo offered the NBA a chance to work with salty snacks inlcuding Doritos and Ruffles, as well as beverages like Mountain Dew, Aquafina and Brisk.

"The level of enthusiasm across their broad portfolio of brands was really second to none," Collins said.

"One of the most compelling aspects of this relationship is their incredible commitment to activation," Collins added. "Across not only the brands, but also in aligning with youth, we are working on a number of youth initiatives."

Coke won't be out of the NBA picture completely. Teams and players—like Sprite endorser LeBron James—can still cut their own deals with either Coke or Pepsi. But teams tend to sign with league sponsors.

Omnicom Group's BBDO handles the Mountain Dew brand while OMD handles media planning and buying for a variety of brands. PepsiCo spokeswoman Jennifer Ryan said the deal will not affect current agencies.

The deal between PepsiCo and the NBA was first reported Monday by SportsBusiness Journal and Beverage Digest. In a statement, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said she wants to "redefine the meaning of sports marketing partnerships."

Pepsi Tells Us Why A Super Bowl Ad Should Never Just Be A One-Off

via BusinessInsider

Pepsi-owner PepsiCo is spending a huge amount of its budget on the Super Bowl this year.

It has a raft of ads and marketing activity planned for the big game across its portfolio of brands. Not least: Pepsi sponsoring the huge half-time show, which will feature Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz. (We’ve listed everything we know so far about PepsiCo’s Super Bowl plans at the end of this article.)

Many other brands have started teasing their ad campaigns over the past few weeks as excitement builds toward kick-off on February 1. But PepsiCo says its Super Bowl campaign is the culmination of a season’s worth of activity.

We spoke over the phone with the chief marketing officer of Frito-Lay Ram Krishnan (which is promoting Doritos during the game) and Pepsi’s chief marketing officer for North American beverages Simon Lowden (who is also responsible for the Mountain Dew ads running ahead of the game) about why brands that just dip in and out of the Super Bowl or buy ads as a one-off are missing the real attraction of the big game.

PepsiCo is three years into a 10-year deal with the NFL (but its relationship stretches back 31 years) and this year will mark the fourth time Pepsi has sponsored the half time show (you might remember Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers from last year’s game.) Many of its brands are now intertwined with the NFL: Gatorade has been the official sports drink of the league since 1983 and Doritos has been running its “Crash the Super Bowl” since 2006.

Krishnan told us: “If you spend $3.5 million or $4.5 million on a Super Bowl spot, if you don’t have consumer engagement throughout the whole season, I’m not sure that pays off. The Super Bowl is the big day, but [for us] it’s the culmination of a whole year of effort.”

Lowden added: “There are 185 million domestic fans for football. The great thing about the NFL is that every game is like the FA Cup Final. Every game matters.”

So for PepsiCo brands, Super Bowl activity really starts way back in September. That’s when Doritos relaunched its long-running “Crash the Super Bowl” competition in which it asks consumers to send in their entries for their videos to be made into the brand’s big game ad, for example. The competition received about 4,900 entries, and the finalists’ videos — which can be viewed on a dedicated website — have racked up more than 3.2 billion impressions.

Here's one of the entrants bidding for a Super Bowl ad slot (and a $1 million prize): 

Meanwhile, Pepsi’s Super Bowl-related activity has achieved 1 billion impressions since the end of November, Lowden says, although that has been helped by some TV teasers.

But even with the season-long rhetoric in mind, PepsiCo has still forked out a considerable amount on the game itself: The half time show doesn’t come cheap, it has purchased several of those coveted $4.5 million 30-second slots, and that’s not to mention the second-screen paid activity it has planned with Facebook and Twitter. Clearly there’s something about the Super Bowl itself that PepsiCo thinks will pay off?

Lowden tells us: “What we know is we have a 70% year on year increase in better in-store programs with [retailers]. Snacks and beverages together. These are on-shelf displays that we would not get without the NFL program. That’s part of how we measure success.”

Basically, on and around the big game, PepsiCo’s massive marketing program drives traffic into stores. Retailers love this and offer up more shelf space and coveted end-of-aisle slots. PepsiCo sells more products. It’s a perfect circle. But it’s something that can only come out of its brand’s already-strong associations with the NFL — something many brand advertisers simply don’t and likely never will have so long as PepsiCo continues its relationship with the league.

Lowden adds: “The NFL would say their best partner, without a doubt, is PepsiCo. We are three years into a 10-year deal. With that comes enormous trust and planning: We started planning Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco a year ago. We plan together and become part of the brand team.”

With that comes access to shared data about what motivates people to watch games and buy related snacks and drinks. And that’s something that only comes with a relationship, not a one-off punt.

PepsiCo is prepping its “biggest activation ever” during the Super Bowl this year. Here’s what it has planned:

Pepsi

Sponsoring the half-time show starring Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz, plus a lead-in commercial.

Viewers can even "shop" the half time show, buying the items that appear on screen via platforms like Twitter thanks to a partnership with ShopTV.

Paid-for Twitter Amplify and Facebook activity to promote the second-screen experience throughout the show.

Outdoor advertising all over the Phoenix area, where the game is being played — including mysterious crop circles. Lowden told us Pepsi is playing on the theme of the desert and we should think "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

On January 18 the brand held a concert with a performance form Nico & Vinz as part of a “Hype Your Hometown” competition.

Doritos

Two “Crash the Super Bowl” ads.

Mountain Dew

11 ads during the Super Bowl pre-game show to showcase two new “KICKSTART” flavors.

Tostidos

The official chip and dip sponsor of the NFL is hosting a Super Bowl party experience from January 28 to February 1 in downtown Phoenix.

And that's not to mention all the in-store and on-pack activity across many more of PepsiCo's brands.

Why Pepsi's NFL Strategy Skewed Digital This Fall

via AdAge

Even though Pepsi is the official soft drink of the National Football League, the brand has been noticeably absent during the games' TV commercial breaks this year.

But it's not because PepsiCo has turned its back on the league. Rather, Pepsi has chosen to embark on a digital-centric strategy this fall, spending almost all of its football marketing dollars on online videos starring NFL players. That will change soon, as Pepsi begins airing TV ads leading up to its heavily promoted sponsorship of the Super Bowl halftime show.

But for the the first half of the season, brand leaders decided digital was more efficient and effective. "As we've studied consumers media consumption behaviors around the NFL, we've seen a lot more engagement online as [fans] research players or teams for updates through the first part of the season," said Amy Spiridakis, Pepsi's brand marketing director. "As the season is now winding down, gearing up towards the playoffs, you'll see in the next couple weeks [that] we [will] shift directions a little bit."

She declined to comment on the specifics of the upcoming TV campaign. Last season, the brand began airing halftime-themed ads during the playoffs, leading up to the Super Bowl halftime show starring Bruno Mars. Katy Perry is expected to star in this season's show, according to various media reports, although Pepsi and the NFL have yet to confirm the performer.

Pepsi last year put a lot more TV weight at the beginning of the year, led by a one spot that asked viewers, "Are you fan enough?"

This year's digital campaign, called "All for Football," has featured videos of NFL players Andy Dalton, Matt Stafford and Nick Mangold making surprise appearances at Pepsi retailers.

The latest ad (above), which breaks Wednesday, features Drew Brees, who guides shoppers wearing a Pepsi "smart helmet" through an obstacle course erected in a Walmart parking lot in New Orleans. Earlier videos were set in a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, a Hess convenience store and a Meijer grocery store. The Marketing Arm handled the Buffalo Wild Wings spot, while Mekanism was the agency for the other three.

AD AGE 

While its retail partners get valuable exposure, Pepsi paid for the ads. "We've really been looking for how we can change our activation model with partners," Ms. Spiridakis said. "We see this as really offering those partners value through both media and content, while it simultaneously builds both our brand as well as that of our partner."

In the Buffalo Wild Wings ad, for instance, Andy Dalton is seen conducting a news conference on a video screen inside a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant. PepsiCo replacedCoca-Cola in 2013 as the beverage supplier to Buffalo Wild Wings in a deal that called for "joint marketing initiatives tied to sports and entertainment."

Pepsi has supported the ads with promoted social media posts, as well as pre-roll digital video ad buys. The only TV buy is on the NFL Network.

The three previously released spots have drawn a combined 2.5 million Youtube views. That falls short of the views generated by some of Pepsi's recent viral video hits. For instance, last year an "Uncle Drew" ad for Pepsi Max -- which starred NBA star Kyrie Irving -- drew more than 4 million views in a single week, according to the Ad Age Viral Video Chart.

But Ms. Spiridakis said the Youtube counts do not include views imbedded inside social media posts. According to Pepsi, the three videos have generated more than 4 million views when social media is included. "We've been extremely pleased with this campaign to date," Ms. Spiridakis said.