• by Sarah Mahoney , 4 hours ago

The clues aren’t exactly subtle. First comes a paw print in the snow. Then thunderous footsteps echoing through Pepsi’s offices. Finally, a blindfolded polar bear steps into frame.

Super Bowl viewers can expect a familiar setup. Polar bears, after all, have long belonged to Coke — first appearing in a French ad in 1922, then becoming global stars with the 1993 “Always Coca-Cola” campaign, and most recently sparking backlash when Coke rendered them with generative AI.

Pepsi’s 15-second teaser, which aired during the NFL Conference Championships, flips that iconography on its head. The blindfolded bear is poised to take the test himself.

Created by BBDO alongside Pepsi’s in-house content team, the spot resets the stakes to where they were in the original 1975 Pepsi Challenge: a blind taste test designed to strip away branding and let flavor do the talking. Back then, the result was disruptive. Consumers preferred Pepsi when labels disappeared.

Pepsi brought the challenge back last year with a modern twist, pitting the companies’ zero-sugar colas against each other. The results — documented on Instagram with the unglamorous precision of a B-school case study, complete with clearly labeled axes and no attempt to make the data “fun” –showed Pepsi Zero Sugar winning preference in 66% of the U.S. overall.

Even in Atlanta, ostensibly the bears’ hometown, Pepsi came out ahead, preferred by 58% of participants.

The brand has also been quick to connect taste tests to business momentum. While the zero-sugar cola category grew roughly 12% per month last year, Pepsi says its zero-sugar product posted average sales gains of 30% in each of those months.

In classic challenger fashion, Pepsi isn’t just poking the bear. It’s betting the taste test still bites.