Were Pepsi Cola Right in Passing Up the Opportunity to Advertise During the Super Bowl?
February 11th, 2010 by Geoff
A staggering 100 million–strong audience would be enough to catch the eye of any company to grab a spot on the TV during the Super Bowl. A high percentage of viewers tune in to the Super Bowl just for the adverts alone. As you can see this is advantageous for any company. Pepsi, after 23 Years of advertising during the Super Bowl have decided this year to leave it to their competitor’s coke. Coke which used two different spots, one with a famous “Simpsons” character in will reap the rewards of TV advertising. Figures are yet to be released on sales but thought to be a massive increase.
Pepsi have decided to use their money else where and go down the route of Social Marketing to promote their “Pepsi Refresh” initiative. Pepsi plans to give away $20 million in grant money to fund projects in six categories: health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods and education. Pepsi have advertised on Twitter and Facebook to promote this idea and have on the website given the opportunity to put your own ideas forward for new categories.
“This is such a fundamental change from anything we’ve done in the past,” says Lauren Hobart, chief marketing officer for Pepsi-Cola North America Beverages. “It’s a big shift. We explored different launch plans, and the Super Bowl just wasn’t the right venue, because we’re really trying to spark a full-year movement from the ground up. The plan is to have much more two-way dialogue with our customers.”
Overall the message that Pepsi are trying to promote is not what the audience want. Pepsi Refresh is a serious subject and would be hard to put across in a colourful message that will get the public talking.
Only time will tell if this was a good or bad decision but I am sure all at Pepsi have looked at this and are confident in their decision.
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