Purchasing for Super Bowl parties just got easier. Two CPG behemoths are boosting their brands' cooperation in the retail store using the upcoming Super Bowl as a way to generate unprecedented synergies from in-store marketing.

PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev will put Bud Light and Pepsi together for the first time under the new effort, which AB InBev internally called a "National Big Bet," according to Ad Age. The companies previously had paired AB InBev drinks with PepsiCo-owned snack brands such as Doritos and Lay's, but not beverages.

As official Super Bowl sponsors — and Budweiser's Bud Light the official beer of the NFL — the respective beverage giants are hoping the co-branded in-store signage will woo shoppers in the days leading up to America's Biggest Snacking Occasion.

The co-branded marketing materials reportedly include display signs showing two bags of Doritos, two bottles of Pepsi and two bottles of Bud Light along with the Super Bowl logo and the slogan, "Super Bowl. Super Team. Super Party."Continue reading...

Wonderful Pistachios announced today today that it plans to make its first appearance during the Super Bowl, befitting its rapidly rising status as a snack brand to challenge even the granddaddy of the business, Frito-Lay, and its Doritos brand that often dominates Super Bowl advertising with its Crash the Super Bowl fan-created ad campaign.

"We're thrilled at being able to bring consumers a healthy alternative that tastes good and is as fun as any other big brand they might enjoy during the Super Bowl," Marc Seguin, chief marketing officer of the Wonderful Pistachios brand — a corporate sibling to Pom Wonderful — told brandchannel. "We have a product that's unique, and just as fun [as Frito-Lay's], but also really healthy."

Wonderful's Super Bowl ad will continue its marketing theme of "Get Crackin'" that has featured unexpected spokespeople including Rod Blagojevich, the then-discredited and now imprisoned former governor of Illinois, "but with a new twist," Seguin said. "We'll definitely take it up a notch for the Super Bowl." 

That "twist" will feature the stylings of South Korean rapper Psy of "Gangnam Style" fame, whose music video has notched a record-breaking billion views on YouTube. Psy will wear a pistachio-green suit in the ad and show a special way to crack open pistachios, in keeping with the Get Crackin' campaign theme.Continue reading...

Super Bowl XLVII is getting closer, so more heavyweight brands are making the required heavyweight commitment to advertise during the Big Game on CBS on February 3.

The network said today that all of the available spots are sold out at around $4 million per 30 seconds, with the latest returning brands including Chrysler from last year and Taco Bell from three years ago.

Budweiser plans to debut Budweiser Black Crown, an amber lager with higher alcohol content, with a 30-second spot during the game. Anheuser-Busch InBev introduced Bud Light Platinum during last year's game, while Black Crown was developed via last year's Project 12 regional brewmaster challenge.

Taco Bell had a very good year with a snap-back in sales on the strength of new produccts such as Doritos Locos Tacos, and so the Yum!-owned brand has confirmed it's suiting up for the Super Bowl for the first time since 2010. The chain's 60-second spot will "support the brand’s 'LIVE MÁS' tagline and spirit."

Doritos, meanwhile, tapped actress Ali Landry, who rose to fame during her 2008 Super Bowl commercial debut with the brand, to announce the five finalists for its fan-voted "Crash the Super Bowl" creative commercial challenge.Continue reading...

If ever a non-alcohol brand has been associated with partying, it's Tostitos. The brand always promotes itself heavily for Super Bowl consumption and sponsors its own college-football bowl game, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, every year, including a campaign last year.

The Frito-Lay-owned sibling brand of Doritos also has associated itself with "homecomings" for U.S. military members over the last few years.

So now Tostitos, as you can follow along on its Facebook page, has joined those interests into a huge new promotion that combined partying and homecoming. It sponsored a football-field "surprise party" for selectd U.S. military veterans who only thought they had shown up to play a flag-football game for charity.

Instead, the 28 unsuspecting service men and women were greeted at the Cerritos College stadium near Los Angeles by more than 12,000 "fans", legendary college coaches Urban Meyer and Bobby Bowden, NFL veterans Kurt Warner and Marcus Allen, actors Owen Wilson and Eric Stonestreet, and chart-topping band Gym Class Heroes. And they all had their roles in the game.Continue reading...

At least when marketers take out ads during the Super Bowl, they always know what they're going to get: A game stretching over about four hours and including one long halftime show. But in its best-four-out-of-seven format, baseball's World Series can be more problematic for brand sponsors because they never really know whether they've got two weeks — or just one — to make their impressions.

That's why, while the San Francisco Giants' four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers was sweet for San Francisco, it proved problematic for at least two advertising efforts tied directly to the World Series — and, seemingly, to the probability that the Series would last for at least five games.

Take Taco Bell. Thanks to a stolen base by Angel Pagan of the Giants during Game 2 of the Series, Taco Bell is planning a US-wide promotion tomorrow with MLB (assuming Hurricane Sandy doesn't blow it off-course) in which anyone in America can swing by for free Doritos Locos Tacos between 2 and 6 p.m. local time.

Pagan kicked off the fulfillment end of the "Steal a Base, Steal a Taco" promotion with his swipe, stating that he "couldn't be happier my stolen base won free tacos for America.'Continue reading...

The Doritos Crash the Super Bowl user-created ad contest is back for the seventh consecutive year, this time around with a big Hollywood ending — the chance to work with director Michael Bay on the next installment of the Transformers movie franchise.

The pitch: "The great Super Bowl ad-venture is back. This year, if you make a DORITOS ad you might see it air on the Super Bowl and win not just $1 Million but a prize that's twice as explosive: a gig with high-octane Hollywood hit-maker Michael Bay on Transformers 4," which opens June 27, 2014. Submissions open on Oct. 8; more details in PepsiCo's press release and on Facebook.

Are you ready for some football? Big brands surely are. The National Football League may be a marketing and TV-programing juggernaut, but it is carrying more weight for more major brands than ever.

Take auto advertisers, for instance. Despite football telecasts that already were slated to be crowded with other car brands, Audi decided to use tonight's kickoff game between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys for the marketing launch of its crucial new 2013 S Models. These performance nameplates (S6, S7 and S8) and the "S" brand are fundamental for Audi to move to the next phase of its positioning in the U.S. market, as a provider of exciting, luxurious and well-designed automobiles.

And so the NFL gets the call tonight to host the first Audi ad under its new tagline, "Heighten Every Moment," featuring the Audi S8. The 60-second spot (watch it above) will run in the first break after kickoff. Audi also announced that it will appear in the Super Bowl game in February, its sixth consecutive advertising appearance in the big game.Continue reading...

AT&T posts $4-billion quarterly profit and sells 3.7 million iPhones (click here for highlights).

Amazon pursues careful state-sales-tax strategy.

Apple and Samsung gear up for "patent trial of the century" as Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7 is banned in EU.

Apple is expected to beat estimates in today's earnings conference call, if not a blowout.

BMW invests in EV-charging network.

Billabong gets lower takeover offer.

Capital One deceptive-marketing fine "unlikely" to change its strategy.Continue reading...