Strategic Brilliance or Blunder: Is Pepsi’s making a mistake by not advertising in the Super Bowl?

December 17, 2009

Salient data points:

• 23: # of consecutive years of Pepsi Super Bowl advertising
• 7.3%: Pepsi’s volume decline in first nine months of 2009
• 2.3%: Soft-drink industry’s volume decline over same period
• 6.6%: Coke’s volume decline over same period
• $74.6M: Pepsi brand ad investment in 2008
• 60%: year-over-year (YOY) increase in Pepsi’ online ads in 2010
• $3M: Cost of 30-second Super Bowl
• 98.7M: # of 2009 Super Bowl viewers

Strategic Brilliance or Blunder:  Brilliance.  The TV ad spot is becoming less relevant as “marketing with meaning” is gaining more traction.   

Source(s):  WSJ, Beverage Digest, TNS Media Intelligence