Pepsi might have FOMO from the Super Bowl halftime show, but not from the game itself.

After a decade, the soda brand announced in 2022 that it wouldn’t continue as halftime show sponsor. Apple Music scooped up the rights, while Pepsi maintained its status as the NFL’s official soft drink, but viewers watching the Super Bowl might have noticed the brand didn’t run a TV ad this year, despite the fact that it’s leaned into its NFL sponsorship in recent months.

Fans lucky enough to have been in Las Vegas for the game, though, may have run into Pepsi marketing around the city: The brand spent Super Bowl Sunday and the week before promoting Pepsi Wild Cherry through its ongoing “Get Wild” campaign.

“There are few things wilder than a Super Bowl in Las Vegas,” Pepsi CMO Todd Kaplan told Marketing Brew. “I think the opportunity, as we look at our core target and where they’re spending their time, is partnering with a lot of these creators who have such avid followers…and figuring out a way to tell really dynamic stories with them, leveraging Las Vegas as the creative canvas.”

Continue reading here.—AM

How? With Morning Brew’s engaged audience of 22m+ monthly readers, of course.

Our unique community of young, hard-to-reach readers (who are 1.7x more likely to have a household income of $150k+) can give your B2B offerings the valuable visibility you’re looking for.

B2B decision-makers know how crucial it is to get their business’s potential in front of the right s, and the Brew’s paid advertising opportunities connect your brand to our audience by leveraging our popular B2B-centric franchise newsletters, specialized events, and skyrocketing cache of multimedia content.

Morning Brew is powered by the knowledge our readers trust us to deliver. From Retail Brew’s trending insights to Healthcare Brew’s timely updates, we’ve got a B2B Brew for you. Which one will you choose to grow with?

Advertise with us.

So…those Temu ads, huh?

There are a few different advertising angles to unpack after Sunday’s Super Bowl ad bonanza, but the usual suspects were all there—celebrities, mascots, surprises (we didn’t have Beyoncé on our bingo cards), and even a politician and a couple religious organizations.

Marketing Brew reached out to some creative folks in advertising to get their initial thoughts about which ads stood out, and which may have missed the mark.

Perrin Anderson, SVP group creative director at RPA: Reese’s. It just made me laugh. There’s nothing better than a simple joke done really well. It also has lots of weird, rewatchable elements. It stood out on a very noisy night.

Steve Knapp, managing director of media and data science at Colle McVoy: The fan favorite at my own big-game party was Verizon’s Beyoncé ad, hands down. The creative foil of Beyoncé doing all sorts of things to break the network was a crisp articulation of the brand’s long-standing message of superior 5G coverage. The “Beyonc-AI,” “Barb-Bey” and “President BOTUS” might not have been real, but Beyoncé brought extra staying power, teasing her upcoming country album release with two tracks dropped following the ad.

Dan Viens, head of creative at Wieden+Kennedy’s Bodega agency: I loved CeraVe’s social posts of Michael Cera carrying all the lotion and signing the bottles at the store. The ad was a lot of fun, but that lead-up was phenomenal.

Part of the genius is that I think I’ve had a CeraVe product in my house for years, and it kind of always felt like a store brand. Now I actually know how to pronounce it, and it’s staked out some really weird fun ground.

Glen Hilzinger, chief creative officer at Luquire: On the top of the I-wish-I-had-done-that scale is Toyota Tacoma’s “Dareful Handle.” A simple idea (underscore “idea”) that playfully owned a feature found on every vehicle. No million-dollar celebrity, million-dollar song, or million-dollar sweepstakes gimmick. Just a million-dollar idea.

Read more here.—RB

Looks like US lawmakers aren’t the only ones feuding with TikTok.

Late last month, Universal Music Group pulled its catalog of music, which includes songs by Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Drake, from the platform after failing to reach an agreement on a new contract.

In an open letter about the decision, Universal blamed TikTok’s artist compensation terms, and mentioned online safety as well as “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI” as reasons for the decision.

In its own statement, TikTok accused Universal of putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters,” and said TikTok has been a “free promotional and discovery vehicle” for the label’s artists.

The move has marketers watching the developments closely, as it could affect brands and creators, as well as the broader social media landscape, agency execs told Marketing Brew.

Ryan Ku, SVP and head of strategy at agency Movers+Shakers, said the “developing tension” between TikTok and content owners like Universal may prompt brands to change how they engage with audiences and creators, he said.

• “Where this impacts brands is, a lot of the influencers and creators that we and other brands work with build their audience oftentimes using these artists’ music,” he said. “So there’s a downstream effect.”

Keep reading here.—JS

Get out the vote. Ready or not, election year is here. Reimagine how you campaign with StackAdapt’s Guide to Digital Political Advertising. Curious how connected TV advertising can help you get the most out of every ad (and every piece of first-party data) in your voting district? Read on.