The Super Bowl has long served as a prominent front for the protracted soft drink war between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. This year, the booze giants will be fighting that battle somewhere else.
Coca-Cola said on Friday it would not publish ads in CBS’s broadcast of Super Bowl LV, citing a ‘difficult choice’ made to ensure we invest in the right resources at unprecedented times. ‘Coke’s announcement follows a similar version of rival Pepsi, which prefers to focus on its annual rest time show rather than running ads for its flagship beverage (its parent company, PepsiCo, will put together an ad for its Mountain Dew soda with different snacks from Frito-Lay).
Coke declined to make drivers available for further comment. The data from Kantar, an advertising expense tracker, the company spent $ 10 million on ads that aired on Fox’s Super Bowl LIV in 2020.
The liquor companies’ decisions to put their drinks on the sidelines will undoubtedly raise more questions about the financial underpinnings of the Super Bowl during an economic downturn. The coronavirus pandemic has forced many advertisers to reduce their budgets and reallocate expenses. In the past, Pepsi has put the Super Bowl activity under pressure. In 2010, when the country was working away from a severe recession, Pepsi decided not to publish ads for any of its drinks, ending a 23-year streak of drinking during the Big Game.
CBS, which is seeking about $ 5.5 million for Super Bowl TV commercials, has not yet recorded a sale of its commercial stock. According to Kantar, last year’s game generated an estimated $ 435 million in advertising spending – a new record.
Coca-Cola last sat out of the Big Game in 2019 and chose to hold an ad just before kicking off the broadcast, but not in the case itself. Thus, the soda maker ended a series of 11 years of seeing Super Bowl ads.
Coke has become a stalwart of the Super Bowl for the past two decades. Coca-Cola, which works hand in hand with advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, has given one of its slogans a life to the game.
In 2008, the liquor business offered a dazzling spot in which Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon characters (Underdog and Stewie from ‘Family Guy’) chased after a balloon version of a bottle of Coke – only to be maneuvered out by Charlie Brown. Recognizing more Super Bowl viewers who used smartphones during the game, Coca-Cola streamed a stream on social media in 2013 of its famous animated polar bears commenting on all the Super Bowl commercials. During a previous Super Bowl run (the soft drink giant took a break from the game after 1998), Coke pulled the strings with an ad featuring former Pittsburgh Steeler defensive tackle “Mean” Joe Greene ‘ throw a jersey for a young football fan. The appearance of the ad in Super Bowl XIV in 1980 helped make it a classic, although the ad was previously aired on TV.
More to come …