Pepsi to Skip Super Bowl, Use Web Instead

In a lot of ways, it’s the biggest day in marketing. As big as other shows might be, the Super Bowl is the only event anybody watches exclusively for the commercials. And Pepsi has a long (23 year) history of participating – on last year’s Super Bowl, they spent $33 million.

This year, they’re sitting out.

Instead of that, they say, they’re investing $20 million into “Refresh Everything”, a project that connects the company’s philanthropic efforts with social media. The math works out – it’s a cost savings, and everyone appreciates that in a wintry economic climate.

But the real story is about the industry. With or without economic pressure, even traditional-marketing mainstays like Pepsi have to get the best return on their dollar. Pepsi knows the mass media mega-buy story. With this, Pepsi’s saying that they expect get more value by connecting with their audience directly.

From: Pepsi Drops Super Bowl Ads in Favor of Cause Marketing

Picture of Dan posted by Dan Nordquist on February 4th, 2010 at 10:33 am  Permanent link to this post

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