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Even though Pepsi hasn’t sponsored a Super Bowl halftime show since 2022, parent company PepsiCo has maintained a strong presence at the big game in recent years, using advertising to launch a revamped Pepsi Zero Sugar, bring back Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest and highlight innovations like the Starry and Mountain Dew Baja Blast. This strategy continued this year, with PepsiCo running four ads across three brands central to its growth plans: Pepsi Zero Sugar, Lay’s and Poppi.
PepsiCo reported organic revenue growth of 2.1% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 1.7% for the full year, according to its latest earnings report. Pepsi Zero Sugar delivered double-digit net revenue growth and market share gains in 2025, helping drive sales and growth for the company’s namesake brand. Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that PepsiCo acquired last year, was expected to see retail sales grow more than 45% year-on-year in 2025, and Lay’s is one of a large number of global products PepsiCo is reorganizing as part of its accelerated growth plan.
For Super Bowl 60, Pepsi Zero Sugar took the brand’s iconic Pepsi Challenge to the next level, Lay’s featured heartwarming stories, and Poppi tapped into pop culture with Charli XCX. Ads for Pepsi and Lay’s took two of the top three spots on the USA Today Ad Meter, with Poppi being the most influential ad, according to data shared by social video intelligence company Dig.
“The Super Bowl is a once-a-year moment when we can reach, engage and capture the attention of millions of fans,” said Jane Wakely, Chief Consumer and Marketing Officer, PepsiCo. “(It’s) a rare opportunity where everyone is going through the same experience, so you get a lot of conversation value.”
The Super Bowl is a prime example of how PepsiCo seeks to engage and convert consumers across five dimensions: screen, scroll, search, shopping, and sensory through the “sense” of the experience. The Super Bowl ad campaign is all about screens and scrolling, but marketers conveyed a sensory experience around the game without being on TV.
“What you didn’t see at the Super Bowl spot this year was Tostitos or Doritos, but we were absolutely at the Super Bowl and we’re creating an experience that strategically highlights where we want to take the brand,” Wakely said.
At the Super Bowl, marketers went beyond advertising with Doritos Loaded Food Truck and Tostitos Cantina activations. Plus, he owns one of the Super Bowl’s most precious moments – dumping Gatorade on the winning coach – but doesn’t pay for it.
“Our brand is right up there, recognizing the sweat, effort and true accomplishments put in by the team,” Wakely said of the big game tradition. “This is an experiential moment where the brand emerges in a way that is unique to the brand. It’s so unique and no other brand can do that.”
Pepsi’s Challenge
With every Super Bowl commercial, PepsiCo seeks to leverage the brand’s past, tell authentic stories, and create unique memory structures for consumers. Pepsi Zero Sugar’s massive gaming campaign, which asked consumers to re-evaluate the brand, did all three.
The brand’s ad, “The Choice,” reinterprets the Pepsi Challenge, which has been a part of the brand’s marketing for more than 50 years, using an animal called the polar bear that has become synonymous with Christmas ads for its main rival, Coca-Cola.
“There has been a lot of debate in the industry about whether we are advertising our competitors using the memory structures associated with their brands,” Wakely said. “We thought carefully about how to make the call to action for the Pepsi ad very clear.”
In 2025, the marketer brought back the Pepsi Challenge with a national taste-testing tour centered around Zero Sugar. Wakery Described as “the future of the category”. PepsiCo data shows Pepsi Zero Sugar recorded sales growth of more than 30% in 2025, significantly outperforming the broader sugar-free cola category.
Likewise, Pepsi has iterated its “Food Deserves Pepsi” and “Pepsi Crashers” platforms that seek to drive at-home sales. PepsiCo’s home-based business delivered mid-single-digit net revenue growth in the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, per its earnings report.
“Our creative team and agency partners are instrumental in creating incredibly compelling creative, but strategy goes beyond that,” said Wakely.
Ray’s Reset
Lay’s expanded its existing big game strategy for its latest Super Bowl campaign. The new effort is based on the Super Bowl 59 commercial “The Little Farmer,” which told a simple, heartwarming story about a real farmer.
This year’s effort was to capitalize on consumers’ interest in food by addressing several consumer insights. For example, even though Lay’s chips partners with 55 family farms in the U.S. to source ingredients, more than 40 percent of U.S. consumers did not know Lay’s chips were made from real potatoes, Wakely said.
By bringing its marketing team closer to the farm, the brand realized it could tell authentic stories that would foster growth with younger consumers while also creating differentiation in the marketplace. As a result, a touching ‘last harvest’ scene centered on the farmer’s retirement was created.
“Great creative begins with a great strategy that goes beyond an advertising campaign while influencing overall brand transformation,” Wakely said.
Building on how the Pepsi Zero Sugar campaign urged consumers to try the brand, Lay’s delivered an even stronger call to action at its second Super Bowl spot. The ad offered 100,000 bags of Lay’s, scheduled to be delivered from the potato to the consumer’s home within 72 hours. Lay’s will continue to be active around the Lay’s Challenge in the coming weeks, Wakely said.
Make it poppy
Poppi’s Super Bowl ad – the brand’s third big game appearance and first under PepsiCo ownership – shows how PepsiCo advertises emerging brands in growing categories like functional beverages. The company is embracing a social-first approach that spreads across the CPG category, represented by a partnership between PepsiCo’s U.S. beverage division and agency VaynerMedia.
“The Poppi team is incredible. They built this brand, they built it social-first, and they understand their audience. They understand how to position Poppi, how to appeal to the hearts and minds of Poppi (drinkers), and they’re in charge of that brand,” Wakely said of the brand’s “magic recipe.”
Poppi’s 30-second Super Bowl commercial featured two young stars across social media and pop culture: pop star Charli XCX and actress Rachel Sennott. The commercial, created with agency Mirimar, was directed by Aidan Zamiri, who also directed “The Moment,” a mockumentary centered on Charli XCX’s “Brat summer” phenomenon that is currently playing in theaters.
The ad delivers “vibes,” as the stars put it, turning a boring classroom into a full-blown dance party complete with motorbikes, flamethrowers and sparkly vomit. The campaign is expected to continue, including as part of a drive to college campuses.
“You’ll see the (vibe) idea become contagious,” Wakely said. “This is a scroll-first, highly discoverable and experiential campaign.”
