Pepsi Not Advertising in Super Bowl Next Year

Every time I see a Pepsi commercial, I get this urge to go on a Fun Ship cruise.

 

They think the Interwebs are the choice of a new generation.

 

They're not going to fund a Hofstra football revival, no matter how much you beg them

 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm Pepsi.

 

Why is this a stupid move? A family member of mine who was very involved in the advertising industry always complained about what a burden it was to advertise during the Super Bowl. You blow half your budget on one night and if the commercial doesn't go over like you had planned, you are SOL.

 

Wait, Hofstra is thinking about starting a football program?

 

How do you measure the benefit of a $3 million, 30-second spot? Super Bowl ad time always seemed wildly extravagant to me.

 

I don't know, I think almost any big-name brand trying to appeal to the largest audience possible would benefit from advertising in the Super Bowl. It's a near perfect advertising platform for companies exactly like Pepsi. When Emerald Nuts advertised in the Super Bowl, they saw spikes of 30-40% in sales in the weeks following the game. They didn't advertise in the Super Bowl last year, but they are back this year. Said they coulnd't afford NOT to advertise in it. It's definitely not a good marketing vehicle for every company. But Pepsi? Oh, yeah.

 

A company like Pepsi tracks cases sold on a daily/weekly basis. They drop prices when a competitor does and they notice immediately if numbers are down in a certain region, grocery store chain, or a particular brand.

They knew right away that the Tropicana packaging design was a disaster & pulled the plug right away.

They also track the success of their promotions.

But if you read further into the article, this new plan to "create projects" that "refresh communities" sounds very nebulous and hard to track. It's going to take a while to determine if they should continue to fund it.

So, unless it's a total, unmitigated disaster, those dollars won't be back in time for 2011.

Also, realize that the person overseeing this new $20 million dollar project is likely not the same person who approved the SB buy. Meaning that the new person is going to lobby hard to keep the money in their budget & not give it back to advertising. Their job likely depends on it.

And even if the new project fails, once the money's gone from his budget, how's the advertising head going to convince anyone to give it back to him? Can he make a good argument that the money's well spent?

 

The going to strictly online advertising is the stupid part.

With the help of adblockers, I either don't get ads on my pages or I don't even notice them.

 

Found an article that says Pepsi's 1999 ad budget in North America was $1.31 billion.

BILLION.

Seriously?

If they just stopped spending $1.31 billion wouldn't they be better off than if they spent that much?

 

I was in Costco last week. There was a small sign in the soda aisle that said Coca-Cola is being unfair in terms of competitive pricing and Costco feels it is unfair to pass that along to their customers. So, no Coke products.
My family prefers Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke anyway.