The 101st NFL season isn’t due to kick off until 10 September, but lead sponsor Pepsi began its activation in mid August with a series of new spots created by agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners built around the idea of what it takes to be a great football watcher.
The approach is to offer a fun take on the home viewing experience and the work seeks to draw a distinction between Pepsi being made for football and Pepsi being made for watching football.
The idea is that while some people are destined to make a name for themselves on the gridiron, others were destined to watch the game from the comfort of their couch – but Pepsi was made for football watching.
The two 15-second TV spots, which replace last year’s ‘Always Be Celebrating’ work, carefully show family groups celebrating the game from home (and not large groups of friends).
‘The Player’ and ‘One Day’ which both rolled out on 15 August.
“There is appropriate social distancing,” explains Pepsi Marketing VP Todd Kaplan of the content pf the commercials.
The TV and online videos are supported by in-store work, social media activations and other tactical activations such as a ‘Tailgate In A Box’ competition
We only paved one fan's yard, but we wanted to give everyone a piece of the tailgate to bring home.
RT this using #tailgateinabox and #sweepstakes for a chance to win.https://t.co/U7OzBzru1l pic.twitter.com/nc4d6qsZiG
— Pepsi (@pepsi) August 24, 2020
Raise your hand if you can't make it to the stadium for tailgating this year.
Neither could this @nyjets superfan. So we paved over her lawn and brought the tailgate home. pic.twitter.com/oKyYpoCLvI
— Pepsi (@pepsi) August 24, 2020
The new NFL campaign, which runs under the brand’s current overarching ‘That’s What I Like’ brand platform, seeks to recognize the various effort fans are putting in to prepare for the new, at-home season.
‘Made for Football Watching’ will roll out further spots closer to the September season start all with theatrical music and dramatic NFL Films-style line readings to convey the big, life moments fans are having as the season starts.
One 30-second spot, called ‘Back Yard’, will air closer to the season start and will show a family setting up a cooler, chairs and an inflatable television as they create their own big-game atmosphere.
“We are a team, we are a unit, we are a family,” says the voiceover as the family sets up the yard, concluding, ‘No, literally, we are a suburban family of football fans.”
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Agility is the name of the sports marketing game at the moment and according to Kaplan, Pepsi has a set of activations at the ready for the remainder of the year whether there is football or not.
A necessary precaution considering the relatively high number of NFL players who have already opted out of playing this season and many of the biggest college football programs cancelling their season (including the Big Ten and PAC-12)
“The information [the NFL] is giving us is that a season is going to happen,” says Kaplan. “There’s definitely contingency plans. We are thinking through a bunch of different scenarios. Agility is a huge thing we’re reinforcing with our team and making sure no matter what comes our way, we can move quickly.”
Pepsi has been the NFL’s official soft drink for the last season, so it’s not surprising that despite all the uncertainty about how the game will fair in the era of the pandemic, Pepsi is experienced and confident enough to have a strong, flexible marketing playbook.
It will continue its well established strategy of seeking to link typically healthy summer sales into the autumn through the NFL – America’s most watched professional sports league – as it continues to invest in marketing.
Indeed, despite a decade long cola sector sales decline and all the challenges of COVID-19, Pepsi-Cola sales have been strong with volume up 5.9% for the first six months of 2020 and it currently commands 9.1% of the US soft drink market compared to rival Coke’s 15.8% (according to Beverage Digest).
Links:
Pepsi
https://www.facebook.com/pepsi/
https://www.youtube.com/c/Pepsi
https://www.instagram.com/Pepsi/
Goodby Silverstein & Partners
https://goodbysilverstein.com/
NFL
http://www.nflshop.com/source/bm-nflc…
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