Duhaime on Sunday will be attending her seventh Super Bowl overall and second with PepsiCONTRIBUTED
Pepsi is no stranger to the Super Bowl, and neither is their Sports Senior Marketing Manager MELISSA DUHAIME. She will take in the game for the seventh time in-person this Sunday, though it may come as a relief following the week's worth of events and activation for the soda brand. Duhaime has been in Minneapolis all week preparing not only for a highly anticipated halftime show with JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, but also helping to orchestrate the company's other ventures surrounding the Patriots-Eagles tilt at U.S. Bank Stadium. Duhaime spoke to THE DAILY on the company's strategic plans for the week, where she'll be located in the stadium during the game and whether she has a dog in the fight.
COVERING GROUND: We’re all over the place this week. We have representation at the Mall of America, which has been housing Radio Row this year. Then we have a space at Nicollet Island Pavilion for our Pepsi Generation Live, which is a celebration of our involvement with pop culture over the past 120 years. We also have a Google VR space where fans can be a part of some of our iconic spots. We’re also doing some private events throughout the week for our key executives and talent. We’re really splitting our time between those two sites as well as U.S. Bank to prep for the halftime show. We think fans will be impressed with what they see. Outside of that we’re also launching a program called “For the Fans” on social where fans will have the opportunity to win collectibles from the halftime show. It’ll be a combination of Pepsi items, NFL items and collectibles from Justin’s show.
AFTER HOURS: We have some private events on Friday night, including a dinner reception with JOE THEISMANN and a few other folks who’ll stop in and spend some time with our execs. Earlier that day is our Rookie of the Year announcements at the Pepsi Generations Live pop-up, along with a performance by country duo LOCASH. Those are our bigger events, but our key customers will get to stuff like Nomadic Live and a couple other things as well.
JUST GETTING STARTED: We have Mountain Dew launching a new spot around their “Ice” drink this week, a brand new lemon-lime flavored product with caffeine. And then on the Pepsi side we’re launching our “Generations” campaign. Everything you’ve seen with Pepsi throughout the week has highlighted that campaign. Essentially, those have been our big bets. With Dew Ice it made sense for us to do something together with Doritos Blaze, so for the first time ever we did a joint-spot with Doritos that we launched Tuesday on social before airing during the game. We’ve also partnered with Buccaneers DT GERALD MCCOY and Steelers RB LE'VEON BELL as spokespersons for Dew Ice. We’ve spent time with them on Radio Row this week and they’ve been making appearances at our pop-up space.
THE GAMEPLAN: We will have our halftime show suite for the execs and talent that are in town with us. We’ll spend time there early in the game, but then we physically will be getting the giveaway items ready for fans as well throughout the first half. We’ll make our way around the entire stadium essentially in that time.
WHO YA GOT? The Patriots are a Pepsi team, so we are 100% supporting them. Once the halftime show is over we’ll get to relax a little bit and take in the second half. U.S. Bank is impressive, I’ve been a couple times now for walk-throughs though I haven’t actually seen a game there yet. It's been a great host so far this week.
