Pepsi Won't Field Super Bowl Ads

Pepsi will end its 23-year advertising presence on the Super Bowl telecast to focus on a cross-platform marketing push with a strong digital component. The company was quick to spin the retreat, which will leave the broadcast wide open to archrival Coca-Cola. “The Super Bowl broadcast can be an amazing stage,” an exec says. “However, brands should not blindly anchor themselves to history.”

Pepsi marketing in the new year “will be less about a singular event, less about a moment, more about a movement,” the exec tells Advertising Age. Rhetoric aside, the company appears to be hedging its bets. It will have a robust physical presence in Miami, and Pepsi’s Americas chief said recently new Gatorade products will be rolled out—on the sidelines, of course. (More Pepsi stories.)