In any other America, a Super Bowl without a Pepsi commercial is like a Christmas with no Santa Claus. Disneyland with no Mickey Mouse. JELL-O Pudding with no Bill Cosby. It screams nostalgia. You immediately go to your “safe place.” But this is an America knee deep in economic instability and sensitive to too much flash when everyone is low on cash. That’s why it’s very telling and significant that the soft drink company has decided to put their marketing dollars elsewhere instead of the biggest ad buy of the year — for the first time since 1987, when the company began its Super Bowl advertising.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Pepsi will not buy ad time during the championship game, instead focusing on “cause-related marketing.” Dubbed the Pepsi Refresh Project, Pepsi has set aside $20 million for a grant initiative that will fund proposed community-based projects selected by consumers.
Considered one of the most memorable advertisers around, the star power alone of their ads over the last 23 years reads like a pop culture picture-book of the last two decades: Michael J. Fox, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears and Beyonce to name a few.
No wonder the industry sees their absence from the media event of the year as incredibly risky. PepsiCo will always think about their bottom line and addressing the changing face of their demographic but I can’t help but think there is going to be a little something missing this year without their memorable clips. But the bigger picture: a corporation spending money to be socially responsible? I’ll drink to that!
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