• by Danielle Oster , December 16, 2024

Every year since 1998, SantaCon has brought an assemblage of soused Santas stumbling through Manhattan for the annual holiday-themed pub crawl. A divisive event, at best, the annual ritual detested by many New Yorkers in some ways seems an odd moment to kick off a marketing campaign.

On the other hand, SantaCon NYC is the world’s largest convening of Santa-clad revelers. So Pepsi decided to kick off a promotional campaign for Pepsi Zero Sugar at an event themed around a character closely associated with category-leader Coca-Cola.

The brand staged taste tests with costumed celebrants, comparing Coca-Cola Zero and Pepsi Zero Sugar. According to Pepsi, eight out of 10 Santas preferred Pepsi Zero Sugar – although the brand admits in a release that the results are “based on unscientific polling during a rowdy Saturday afternoon in NYC,” calling the results “only as strong as your holiday spirit.”

“This holiday season, we’re rewriting tradition,” Jenny Danzi, head of brand marketing at Pepsi., said in a statement, characterizing the campaign as “leveraging an iconic part of holiday culture with our unique challenger spirit and inviting consumers on a journey to rethink their expectations.”

The stunt, and subsequent campaign content running across Pepsi’s pages on channels including Facebook,  Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, is designed to invite consumers to join Santa in making the switch this holiday season, with a promotion giveaway offering free cans of the beverage. More accurately, the giveaway offers consumers up to $2.50 cash back on a purchase of a 20-ounce Pepsi Zero Sugar, by texting the code “TASTE” to 81234.

Pepsi’s video post on Instagram teases viewers with the line “Recently, Santa was caught doing something naughty…” which is followed by footage of someone “catching” a man dressed as Santa drinking, and presumably buying, Pepsi Zero Sugar. Employing the hashtag “#SantaSwitched,” the video ends with a nod to the promotional giveaway.

“All the Zero part of the [beverage] portfolio is booming,” PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said during the company’s Q2 earnings call with investors. “Zero, not only on colas, not only on soft drinks, but also on Gatorade, on teas, on coffees, we're seeing [that’s where] consumers are going.”

Despite reported volume growth since a 2023 reformulation,  Pepsi Zero Sugar has struggled to gain ground on Coca-Cola Zero Sugar’s hold on the market. While dressed up in Santa red and modern social media tactics, the campaign is in many ways a continuation of an old strategy for the brand: consumer tests designed to support its supposedly superior taste.

The campaign isn’t Pepsi’s only holiday effort centered around a sugarless product this season. It also called on Shaq to help introduce limited-edition  Pepsi Zero Sugar Gingerbread Mini Cans for the holidays.