The Creatives Room

Pepsi's Greatest Ads

Pepsi has always positioned itself as the challenger - younger, hipper, more culturally attuned than its rival. The Pepsi Challenge turned product comparison into a cultural moment in the 1970s. The brand's Super Bowl halftime sponsorships and advertising have featured Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and Beyonce. And the brand has occasionally produced genuinely groundbreaking creative work - including some of the first advertising to feature Black celebrities as aspirational rather than merely representative figures.

The campaigns in this collection

  1. PepsiCo Food Service - Pepsi · 2018

    Pepsi "PepsiCo Food Service". A lively shared meal frames Pepsi as the drink of good times with friends.

  2. Phone Coolers - Pepsi Colombia · Sancho BBDO · 2023

    Pepsi Colombia's Phone Coolers: Gen Z's phones overheat from gaming and binge-watching, so the refreshment brand engineered coolers for the phones themselves. The insight: 'refreshing' made literal for the device the audience loves most - the brand cools the object of their attention to earn some of

  3. Surfers - Pepsi · AlmapBBDO · 2005

    Tarsem Singh directs Beckham, Henry, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldinho and Torres as territorial surfers who settle the beach the only way they know - with a football, to Dick Dale's "Misirlou", no dialogue, ending "Arrisque mais, viva mais" (risk more, live more). Part of the global "Dare for More" platfo

  4. The Bodega Giveback - Pepsi · VaynerMedia · 2024

    For the 2020 holidays, Pepsi enlisted Bronx duo Desus Nice and The Kid Mero - whose Bodega Boys world runs on the idea that the neighbourhood 'orbits the bodega' - to thank the corner stores that kept New York running through Covid. Rather than a scripted tribute, the film follows them into a real b

  5. Code - Pepsi · Sancho BBDO · 2012

    With no media budget, Pepsi Colombia released a snippet of HTML and gave away drinks to anyone who used it - and people pasted the brand's message into major websites all over the internet themselves. The insight is that the web is editable by whoever is willing to paste code into it, and a fanbase

  6. #Pep-si - Pepsi · in house · 2023

    Pepsi sponsored neither club nor player at the Champions League final, but noticed that the most-shown man on the touchline was called Pep. Fans were told to screenshot Guardiola whenever the camera found him, add 'si' beside him and post it - PEP-SI - for a shot at a year's free supply. The insight

  7. Your Bites, Your Rights - Pepsi · Ampfy · 2025

    In a Rio-style bar in São Paulo, Pepsi swapped the printed menu for a tablet that let diners invent their own dishes by voice: they described a combination, an AI generated an image of it, and the kitchen was challenged to actually cook it. The insight is that the fun of eating out is the wanting -

  8. Feel Light - Pepsi Light · Sancho BBDO · 2018

    After decades of Pepsi Light ads built around slim, curvy silhouettes as shorthand for a zero-sugar, zero-calorie drink, the brand's Feel Light campaign pushes past pure aesthetics. The insight: the same feminine curves that once signified thinness alone can carry a bigger idea, liberation from ster

  9. Eat this playlist - Pepsi · Twiga Ukraine · 2020

    To welcome Spotify's launch in Ukraine, Pepsi turned playlists into recipes. The insight: Pepsi lives on music territory but wanted a claim on food too, so each poster's track-by-track listing doubles as the steps of a traditional Ukrainian dish, dumplings, galushki, the Kyiv cutlet, so that when qu

  10. Football Africa featuring Messi Kaka Drogba Lampard Henry and Akon - Pepsi · TBWA iendo · 2010

    Lacking official 2010 FIFA World Cup sponsorship rights, Pepsi needed to capture the tournament's energy and outshine official sponsor Coca-Cola through grassroots cultural relevance. Tapping into the insight that African football is defined by participatory, communal passion rather than elite stadi

  11. Pepsi Football Nation | The Home of Football Banter & Rivalry - Pepsi · Big Time Creative · 2026

    David Beckham introduces a fictional country where the fans, not the officials, write the laws of the game, and the film runs through the arguments that would become statute there - football or soccer, who the real king of skill is - with Salah, Vini Jr, Putellas, Wirtz and Lauren James caught in th

  12. The Choice - Pepsi · VaynerMedia · 2026

    Directed by Taika Waititi, a Super Bowl LX film in which a polar bear - unmistakably Coca-Cola's own mascot - takes the Pepsi Challenge, and with the labels hidden picks Pepsi Zero Sugar, then walks away from his old life to Queen's 'I Want to Break Free'. The insight is the Pepsi Paradox: strip the

  13. The Weeknd Get Ready - Pepsi · bbdo new york · 2021

    Rather than buy a 30-second in-game Super Bowl spot, Pepsi turned the halftime show it already sponsors into the whole campaign - a 'Get Ready' film building anticipation for The Weeknd's performance, plus packaging and a fan portal. The insight is that Pepsi already owned the most-watched twelve mi

Why this collection is worth studying

Pepsi's advertising is most instructive as a study in challenger brand strategy. When you're not the category leader, you have to define yourself in opposition - but the best challenger advertising doesn't just attack the leader, it creates an entirely different set of values. At its best, Pepsi didn't make Coke look bad; it made Pepsi look like the choice of a generation.

See also

Pepsi Best Ads & Campaigns - The Creatives Room