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Flag football and lullabies may never be the same thanks to Pepsi.
After a busy 2023 leaning into nostalgia for its 125th birthday, Pepsi is off to a fresh start in 2024 with the launch of a new campaign for its Wild Cherry flavored colas that it hopes will hit the sweet spot with millennials navigating “adulting.”
The brand’s “Get Wild” campaign specifically targets millennial parents, who are a few years removed from their debaucherous heydays, and whose “wild” sides look a little different once they have kids.
In “#1 Fan,” a man who has definitely participated in his share of stadium revelry back in the day is now a dad bringing the energy—and a cooler full of Wild Cherry Pepsi—to his son’s youth flag football game. He applies face paint and chugs a can of the drink in his car to the soundtrack of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
For “Nursery Rhymez,” the drink prompts new parents to channel softer versions of their former partygoing personas to rock their baby to sleep with a hushed rendition of “Get Low” by Lil John and the East Side Boyz.
The 30-second spots, created by agency VaynerMedia and directed by Kate Hollowell through production company Epoch Films, will debut during the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend, with Pepsi having a heavy NFL buy throughout the season. The “Wild Media Takeover” will span additional broadcast and media platforms, including Barstool Sports and Betches, on streaming platforms, including Spotify, and on social via TikTok and Snapchat.
The brand has also partnered with mobile game Candy Crush for the effort, which Pepsi senior marketing director, Jenny Danzi, told Adweek “meets consumers where they are, where they listen and where they scroll.”
The brand is also enticing consumers to try the flavor by offering free Wild Cherry sodas through Super Bowl weekend and with an in-store sweepstakes for tickets to the 2025 NFL Wild Card Weekend Games.
“Pepsi Wild Cherry is one of those lines that we think has a lot of growth potential in it,” said Danzi, who shared that thousands of participants have already signed up to enter, resulting in “lots of traction at retail.”
