Two-liter bottles of soda and bags of chips are synonymous with game day. But when it comes to the Super Bowl, it's all business for snack food's biggest player.
"Over 90 percent of consumers are going to have snacks and beverages during the game, and most of them are going to be Pepsi-Co products," said Greg Lyons, CMO of PepsiCo Beverages North America.
The company, which owns Frito-Lay, produces 600 million pounds of snacks in the six weeks leading up to the NFL championship game, said Rachel Fernando, CMO of Frito-Lay North America.
"This is 20 percent of our annual production and the second biggest eating day after Thanksgiving," she said.
Ratcheting up the pressure is PepsiCo's long-held position as a top advertiser during the annual event and the sponsor of the much-scrutinized half-time show for the last nine years.
"We've got six different brands that we're advertising, each with their own spot. Then we've got the Pepsi Halftime Show, and we've got Gatorade all game on the sidelines," Lyons said.
While snack favorites like Doritos will return with fresh ads, Cheetos also is coming back after a nine-year hiatus from advertising at the Super Bowl, and Mountain Dew will be getting press for an ad inspired by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that will promote Pepsi's new Zero Sugar line.
PepsiCo also announced earlier this month that it will give a free Pepsi Zero Sugar to everyone in the U.S. if the final score of either team ends in a zero.
The biggest change this year is PepsiCo's halftime show partnership with Roc Nation, the entertainment and sports representation company founded by Jay-Z in 2008, which helped secure both J-Lo and Shakira for the big performances.
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