An upstart marketer may bring some fizz to the annual advertising bowl that takes place inside the Super Bowl.
SodaStream International, which sells the SodaStream home soda maker system as an alternative to bottled soft drinks, is joining the ranks of marketers that will advertise during Super Bowl XLVII on CBS on Feb. 3, 2013. The SodaStream USA unit of the company is to announce on Tuesday morning that it is buying a commercial that is scheduled to appear in the fourth quarter of the game.
What makes the company's arrival onto the Super Bowl particularly interesting is that the two largest soft-drink marketers, Coca-Cola and the PepsiCo Americas Beverages unit of PepsiCo, are also scheduled to advertise during Super Bowl XLVII â€" and the Pepsi-Cola brand is also the sponsor of the halftime show.
SodaStream, however, has always been adept at generating attention for its products by presenting itself as an underdog and tweaking the mainstream soft-drink makers.
The current commercial for SodaStream promotes the SodaStream system as a way to save 2,000 bottles of soda a year, which are shown exploding in stores and warehouses each time someone uses a SodaStream machine. “If you love the bubbles,†an announcer says, “set them free.â€
The commercial was recently banned from British television on the grounds that it “denigrated†the bottled drinks industry. In its place, SodaStream ran a commercial with the “love the bubbles†line written in white type on a black screen.
Plans call for the creative content of the SodaStream spot for the Super Bowl to echo the themes of the “love the bubbles†commercial but express them in a different way.
The creative agency for SodaStream is called Common, and its founders and senior executives include Alex Bogusky, the former creative wunderkind at Crispin Porter & Bogusky who is refashioning himself as a crusader against products that he deems wasteful, unhealthy or environmentally unsound.
Mr. Bogusky is working on the Super Bowl spot, along with another Common founder and executive, Rob Schuham. Other agencies with which SodaStream USA works are the Cross Agency, for media services, and the HL Group, for public relations.
CBS said in November that it had already sold about 95 percent of the commercial time that it planned to run during Super Bowl XLVII, at an average price in the range of $3.8 million for each 30-second spot.
Among the other marketers that intend to advertise during the game, in addition to SodaStream USA, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, are A nheuser-Busch InBev, Audi of America, Best Buy, Cars.com, Century 21, the Lincoln division of Ford Motor, GoDaddy, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Mondelez International (for Oreo) and Volkswagen of America.
Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.
