Pepsi MAX’s award-winning Amazon Ads campaign scores with U.K. football fans

As a first step, Pepsi and Amazon Ads asked themselves what this audience had in common (besides a love for football, of course) that could help inform the campaign. That approach got them thinking about a favorite pastime that many sports fans share: game-day snacks.

From here, they were able to identify a unique angle for the campaign focused on demonstrating how Pepsi MAX complements a variety of meals and bite-size treats, making it a perfect beverage to enjoy while watching sports.

Pepsi wanted to deliver their message to consumers in an authentic and unexpected way that would bridge the gap between inspiration and consumer action. So they landed on a creative concept that could help create a seamless customer journey from product discovery to purchase: the creation of a shoppable digital recipe hub.

The team went on to design the recipe hub as a dynamic, customized Brand Store on Amazon U.K. that combined text, videos, and shoppable images in a multipage format. Through the hub, audiences could explore a video series featuring celebrity chef Big Zuu that highlighted a variety of quick and easy game-day recipes—from cheesy lahmacun flatbreads to sandwiches filled with chicken tikka and chips to a Mexican-inspired four-layer dip (all to be paired with a chilled Pepsi MAX, of course). Finally, in a unique twist, all of the recipe ingredients were made shoppable and delivered directly via Amazon Fresh, along with a free sample of Pepsi MAX.

Charlotte Crideford, total connections planning and media lead for beverages GB and Ireland PepsiCo, says that being able to incorporate multiple Amazon properties into the campaign was central to their strategic vision. “One of the reasons we chose to partner with Amazon Ads is because they offer so many different touchpoints for reaching and engaging customers,” Crideford explains. “In this case, we had the opportunity to drive audiences from content engagement to consideration and conversion by leveraging both the Amazon store and Amazon Fresh—creating a frictionless discovery and shopping experience.”

The approach also complements the evolving ways in which consumers (and particularly younger generations) want to interact with brands. According to From Ads to Zeitgeist, a 2024 global study conducted by Amazon Ads and Crowd DNA, 62% of consumers surveyed are “looking for the creation of more original content,” and 73% of respondents said they “appreciate advertising that entertains them”¹—underlying the benefits of using novel and innovative campaign approaches, such as brand partnerships and creative storytelling.

The report also found that a majority of audiences (63% overall, and 65% of Gen Z adults and 67% of millennials) are increasingly looking to brands to “create shared experiences for people.”² In the report, Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president of business intelligence at GroupM, notes, “For brands, tapping into those places where people are still watching the same thing—sports, big cultural movements, media events—is increasingly important.”³

Running from May to August 2023 alongside the 2022–2023 UEFA Champions League semifinals and final, the campaign (called “Better with Pepsi MAX”) achieved Pepsi’s goals to help advance visibility and brand association among young British sports fans. Notably, the recipe inspiration hub garnered more than 460K visits, saw more than 11K redemptions for Pepsi MAX samples, and received a 99% positive sentiment rate.⁴

Pepsi MAX’s creative and customer-centric storytelling strategy has also not gone unnoticed in the industry—with Digiday naming Pepsi MAX the winner for “Best Use of Video” at the publication’s 2023 Digiday Europe Awards.

Talk about taking an ad campaign to the MAX.