Pepsi-Cola Co. is gearing up for a millennial version of the Pepsi Challenge, again taking on rival Coca-Cola Co.
A massive promotion-sampling program of regular Pepsi and Pepsi One, one of its diet drinks, will be unveiled beginning at the Academy Awards being telecast on ABC Sunday, a spokesman for the soft-drink maker told this column.
Sampling from booths from outside the awards ceremony will start on Saturday, as movie worshippers line up to cheer their idols.
Pepsi will run a Challenge-focused TV commercial, but it’s still being decided whether the spot will involve either Ken Griffey Jr. or Sammy Sosa. Both sluggers recently signed as Pepsi spokesmen, and have had spots produced by ad agency BBDO New York.
Many of today’s soft drink-guzzling youngsters don’t have the foggiest idea what the Pepsi Challenge was all about. As a quick refresher, consumers were shown in blind taste tests sampling Coke and Pepsi, preferring the latter. The Pepsi Challenge ran in the U.S. from 1975 to 1983. The campaign also ran overseas.
The sampling will carry this theme: “Take the Pepsi Challenge. Let Your Taste Decide.” Promotional efforts will continue into the summer, including media and events.
The scope of this new Pepsi Challenge will involve a very steep expenditure, but it can be rewarding if Pepsi can switch tasters to its brands. Every single point in market share counts, so any shift in cola consumption is significant.
Coke Classic, the No. 1 selling soft drink in the U.S., still outsells rival regular Pepsi, the former with 20.3 percent market share, and the latter at 13.8 percent, according to Beverage Digest.
The caffeinated version of Diet Coke has 8.5 percent, while Pepsi One was a bit less than 1 percent in 1999, its first full year of distribution.
Pepsi-Cola Co. also sells Diet Pepsi (5.1 percent market share), but the focus is on Pepsi One.
So the current Pepsi Challenge is being expanded. Consumers “can take the regular cola challenge or the one-calorie challenge,” says former Chicagoan Dawn Hudson, senior VP-strategy and marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America, who is based in Purchase, N.Y.
On Wisconsin? TV Week in Sunday’s Tribune carried an “out-sert”–or promotional wrap–from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism with this new summertime theme: “Stay Just a Little Bit Longer.” How appropriate with the basketball Badgers winning their first two NCAA tournament games, including a huge upset of Arizona, to advance to the West regionals Thursday in Albuquerque. This same promotional piece, via Milwaukee agency Boelter & Lincoln, will appear April 9 in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Wouldn’t it be something if the Wisconsin and Purdue won their next games–and met again as they did in the quarterfinals (Wisconsin the winner) at the recent Big Ten tournament, this time with big stakes–a berth in the Final Four?
– Newhouse’s Fairchild Publications takes over publishing of Details, effective with its October issue, the magazine having recently been part of Newhouse’s Conde Nast Publications. Newhouse acquired Details in 1988. Former Chicagoan Mary Berner is the Manhattan-based chairman-chief executive of Fairchild, which publishes such magazines as W, Women’s Wear Daily, Jane and DNR, a fashion trade newspaper for men. Details, a fashion magazine geared toward young adult men, will be the consumer counterpart to DNR. Fairchild recently set up a Chicago ad sales office.
Strictly Personal: Birthday greetings to Tony Boggiano, 73 (Atalanta Corp.); executive recruiter Kelly A. Brown, 35; Lori Dabiero, 38; Chris Galvin, 50 (Motorola); Gayle Dieck, 39 (& Wojdyla); and Lee Mohamed, 62 (Mark Shale).
Bio-logic Systems Corp., a Mundelein-based designer and marketer of computerized neurodiagnostic testing systems, picked Topin & Associates for marketing communications, including advertising, for the introduction of Abaer, a newborn hearing screening system. Separately, Dennis F. Gilroy became chief financial officer of Topin, an agency specializing in health care accounts. Gilroy recently was chief operating officer of Joint Commission Resources, a consulting firm. Topin also named Rich Horwath a VP.
On the move: John Wyville to Y&R Chicago as a senior VP and creative director. … Amy Hesser to director of media relations at TechImage, a high-tech PR firm in Arlington Heights.
More Top Picks Best Reflex Bags With Pockets