As pro football season officially gets underway, Pepsi is trying its hand at a different playbook for reaching consumers. The longtime NFL sponsor is focusing on Food Deserves Pepsi, a brand platform launched last year that positions its products as superior meal pairings and features stunts where undercover agents outfitted in blue jumpsuits storm gatherings like barbecues to swap out rival sodas, often to chaotic results. The agents — the Pepsi Crashers — this go-around are getting an assist from top NFL players Josh Allen and Justin Jefferson and targeting tailgates around the country, with plans to turn reactions into real-time content. 

“This is not about an ad that’s on TV. This is about living and experiencing our brand proposition in real life,” said Gustavo Reyna, vice president of marketing at Pepsi. 

Food pairings have been prevalent in Pepsi’s marketing for some time, but bringing Food Deserves Pepsi to the NFL marks a larger strategic shift for the embattled beverage brand. Pepsi for years oriented its football efforts around music — it was the Super Bowl Halftime Show sponsor until 2022 — and ads bursting with celebrity cameos (2024’s NFL campaign, part of a tie-up with “Gladiator II,” starred rapper Megan Thee Stallion alongside athletes Allen, Jefferson, Derrick Henry and Travis Kelce as they battled it out in a trap-laden colosseum). 

“Pepsi Tailgate Crashers” by contrast is more grounded and oriented around authentic game day rituals, with experiential activations planned for tailgates at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, New York’s MetLife Stadium and Washington’s Northwest Stadium, among other venues. Allen and Jefferson appear in a TV spot rolling out this week that sees them receive a pep talk from the Crashers before switching out their jerseys for the brand’s uniform and hitting parking lots to put Pepsi in the hands and coolers of pre-gaming fans.

“It’s perhaps the most important evolution we’ve had in our football campaigns so far,” said Reyna.

The switch-up arrives as Pepsi’s market share continues to slide, with the full-sugar, or blue can, version of the soda now the No. 4 carbonated soft drink by volume in the U.S., per Beverage Digest Data. Sprite, owned by rival Coca-Cola, climbed to No. 3 in May while Dr Pepper sits in the No. 2 spot once held by blue can Pepsi. Pepsi's brand on the whole, inclusive of variants like Pepsi Zero Sugar and Diet Pepsi, remains No. 2 in the category.

Parent PepsiCo is also under growing pressure to produce a turnaround as some of its flagship products decline. Activist investor Elliott Investment Management on Tuesday took a $4 billion stake in the business, raising the stakes for marketing to deliver results.  

Connecting with fans

The boots-on-the-ground approach to “Pepsi Tailgate Crashers,” which will host over 20 events throughout the season, is seen as a way to “build credible, meaningful relationships with people,” Reyna explained, including through established tactics like the Pepsi Challenge. 

The nature of the Crashers, who are often filmed in candid-camera fashion, also lends itself to social media as CPGs prioritize the channel in the chase for younger audiences. PepsiCo’s U.S. beverages division in June deepened its relationship with agency VaynerMedia to make its brands more “culturally fluent” and reactive across social platforms. 

“We’re going to create some very fun content that is going to be social-first for digital channels that will amplify [and] elevate the Food Deserves Pepsi campaign,” said Reyna. “It's going to be a live campaign throughout the season. It starts with this TV spot, but there’s a lot more happening … on the experiential side, as well as content and social.”

On the digital front, Pepsi is partnering with media brands at the intersection of sports and culture like Barstool Sports and Hot Ones to increase relevance, according to Reyna. Agencies OMD, BBDO, the Acceleration Community of Companies and Motive are supporting the Crashers blitz.

Reception so far to Food Deserves Pepsi has been positive, according to Reyna. Some Crashers content has racked up millions of views on sites like YouTube, underscoring the concept’s entertaining appeal. The coming months will see whether the platform carries a Super Bowl-sized opportunity for Pepsi.  

“Food Deserves Pepsi is our main marketing platform and we’re going to double down on it because it’s working for us,” said Reyna.