Pepsi Not Advertising in Super Bowl Next Year

It was more of a Coca-Cola thing, but I just felt like seeing if any F3 fans would jump on it.

 

Having known many marketing people in many different companies and capacities, I take it as an article of faith that 99 percent of them are morons and the remaining one percent are geniuses.

This may or may not reflect reality.

 

Updating. Was in Costco today and Coke stuff was back. And now that I think about it, a couple weeks ago when they weren't selling Coke, they still had it in the fountains in the food court.
Oh well, who really cares?

 

Sounds like you were sent standard sponsorship packages by the reps. That's lazy on their part. Your target audience was very narrow and well-defined, so a proposal for that type of offering is quite different from one for a snack food, for example.

The key is to tailor the proposal so that it means the needs and goals of the client.

I know people who have been involved in the process of putting together Super Bowl spots. Most were image spots as I recall, nothing tied to a specific offer intended to create an consumer response driven by a low price offering, for example.

Direct mail is not the only measurable form of advertising, as has been said on this thread. Specific calls to action can be tracked through other forms of advertising.

The Pepsi dollars being moved is part of an larger program, not just web advertising. It will be interesting to see how it works out for them.

 

The Internet audience might be fractured, but $3 million spent there takes you a lot further a lot longer than one ad during the Super Bowl. Advertising is about frequency and saturation, not a one-day splash. The 1984 Apple Mac ad set off the modern-day frenzy because it DID make such a big deal in one day, but after 25 years it should be clear that was an exception and an accident of history and timing.

At least online Pepsi can tailor specific promotions to specific demographics at specific sites. The idea of the "general audience" ad buy is quickly going out the window, if it hasn't already.

Actually, advertisers like Emerald, GoDaddy and Apple (in 1984) seem to get the best bang for their Super Bowl buck, mainly because they can use the Super Bowl to go from relatively unknown to known in a hurry, and then follow up after the Super Bowl.

 

Yep. And they weren't worth the paper they were written on. When I sold sponsorships, I spent a lot of time learning what a company was looking to do before I put together any kind of proposal. Never sent or brought a boiler plate proposal to a meeting.

I didn't mean to imply that direct mail was the only form of advertising that you could track. Certainly a "call now" phone number in a tv commercial or other calls to action can be tracked.

It's just that direct mail is so easy to track. And with email, it's so fast. Have lots of first class seats still available for EWR-CDG this weekend, lets send out an offer to people who've bought discounted trans-Atlantic first class seats in the past.

Even hospitality when doe right can be tracked. I was very strict about who got tickets to the events we sponsored. I wanted to know who they were inviting, why, and how did they expect to move the needle with the customer.

Our head of Asia sales was very good. She could bring the CEO of Toyota North America to an event we would host and then track it as he, and his organization, bought dozens of first class tickets to Tokyo as a result. Money that would have otherwise been spent on JAL.

That's real revenue. It's incremental. It can be tracked, and it can justify a sponsorship.

This. That's why a Super Bowl ad doesn't make sense (in most cases) for all but the biggest advertisers. Unless you can back up a Super Bowl ad with lots of other ads, it's probably wasted money.

And if you do have that kind of advertising budget, is the Super Bowl worth it? Can you spend that money elsewhere?

 

Total paid media advertising budget for 2009 for Verizon: $3.7 billion. For AT&T: $3.3 billion. So for some companies, you're reaching over 100 million with an advertisement that is less than one-one-thousandth of the budget. That's cost effective. Of course it doesn't work for all companies, but mass market products in areas where there is strong competition and not much difference between products (Bud or Miller? Who cares?), a Super Bowl ad is still a good buy.
It's a KNOWN quantity. Pepsi is trying something different, which may or may not work. Nothing wrong with that, but they're just guessing.

 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hC_n50ZLyl8FLDBIkGfCn7-110BwD9CGIF401

Momentary pricing spat.

Good thing Costco got Coke back, because picking up slabs of Coke Zero is one of the only reasons I go there (as well as filling up with gas).

 

Gas, yes. But $6.50 for a case of Coke isn't a great deal. Now, $10 for a pizza they sell at their food booth, on the other hand..

 

You could come to Chicago for a trade show and get the "new low price" of $73.00 for a case of soda:

 

Every person who may be about to drink their first soda.

Thousands and thousands of those people each day.

Mountain Dew the only Pepsi product I get within a mile of.

 

Or the hot dogs. Mmmmmmmm.