As pro football season officially gets underway, Pepsi is trying its hand at a unique playbook for reaching consumers. The longtime NFL sponsor is specializing in Food Deserves Pepsi, a brand platform launched last 12 months that positions its products as superior meal pairings and features stunts where undercover agents outfitted in blue jumpsuits storm gatherings like barbecues to swap out rival sodas, often to chaotic results. The agents — the Pepsi Crashers — this go-around are getting an assist from top NFL players Josh Allen and Justin Jefferson and targeting tailgates across the country, with plans to show reactions into real-time content.
“This shouldn’t be about an ad that’s on TV. This is about living and experiencing our brand proposition in real life,” said Gustavo Reyna, vice chairman of marketing at Pepsi.
Food pairings have been prevalent in Pepsi’s marketing for a while, but bringing Food Deserves Pepsi to the NFL marks a larger strategic shift for the embattled beverage brand. Pepsi for years oriented its football efforts around music — it was the Super Bowl Halftime Show sponsor until 2022 — and ads bursting with celebrity cameos (2024’s NFL campaign, a part of a tie-up with “Gladiator II,” starred rapper Megan Thee Stallion alongside athletes Allen, Jefferson, Derrick Henry and Travis Kelce as they battled it out in a trap-laden colosseum).
“Pepsi Tailgate Crashers” against this is more grounded and oriented around authentic game day rituals, with experiential activations planned for tailgates at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, New York’s MetLife Stadium and Washington’s Northwest Stadium, amongst other venues. Allen and Jefferson appear in a TV spot rolling out this week that sees them receive a pep talk from the Crashers before switching out their jerseys for the brand’s uniform and hitting parking lots to place Pepsi within the hands and coolers of pre-gaming fans.
“It’s perhaps an important evolution we’ve had in our football campaigns up to now,” said Reyna.
The switch-up arrives as Pepsi’s market share continues to slip, with the brand now the No. 4 carbonated soft drink by volume within the U.S., per Beverage Digest Data. Sprite, owned by rival Coca-Cola, climbed to No. 3 in May while Dr Pepper sits within the No. 2 spot once long-held by Pepsi.
Parent PepsiCo can also be under growing pressure to provide a turnaround as a few of its flagship products decline. Activist investor Elliott Investment Management on Tuesday took a $4 billion stake within the business, raising the stakes for marketing to deliver results.
Connecting with fans
The boots-on-the-ground approach to “Pepsi Tailgate Crashers,” which is able to host over 20 events throughout the season, is seen as a method to “construct credible, meaningful relationships with people,” Reyna explained, including through established tactics just like the Pepsi Challenge.
The nature of the Crashers, who are sometimes filmed in candid-camera fashion, also lends itself to social media as CPGs prioritize the channel within the chase for younger audiences. PepsiCo’s U.S. beverages division in June deepened its relationship with agency VaynerMedia to make its brands more “culturally fluent” and reactive across social platforms.
“We’re going to create some very fun content that’s going to be social-first for digital channels that may amplify [and] elevate the Food Deserves Pepsi campaign,” said Reyna. “It’s going to be a live campaign throughout the season. It starts with this TV spot, but there’s quite a bit more happening … on the experiential side, in addition to content and social.”
On the digital front, Pepsi is partnering with media brands at the intersection of sports and culture like Barstool Sports and Hot Ones to extend relevance, in line with Reyna. Agencies OMD, BBDO, the Acceleration Community of Companies and Motive are supporting the Crashers blitz.
Reception up to now to Food Deserves Pepsi has been positive, in line with Reyna. Some Crashers content has racked up thousands and thousands of views on sites like YouTube, underscoring the concept’s entertaining appeal. The coming months will see whether the platform carries a Super Bowl-sized opportunity for Pepsi.
“Food Deserves Pepsi is our primary marketing platform and we’re going to double down on it since it’s working for us,” the manager said.
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