Dive Brief:

• PepsiCo's Frito-Lay has launched a football-themed campaign promoting several of its brands of chips in the lead up to the Super Bowl, according to details the company shared with Marketing Dive.
• The "Ready for Crunchtime" campaign aims to remind consumers to buy different kinds of chips as they watch football games. The effort includes digital, radio, out-of-home and two TV spots. The "Group Chat" commercial features former NFL stars Deion Sanders, Michael Irvin, Tony Gonzalez and Terry Bradshaw on a video chat discussing which chips they plan to bring to the game. The humorous spot shows Bradshaw getting dressed and wearing Tostitos underwear. The spot will hit the airwaves during college football games on Dec. 26.
• Agency Integer helped develop the campaign while Frito-Lay's internal creative agency produced the TV commercials. The second spot, "Super Bowl," stars Bradshaw and Sanders yelling, "Get your chips for the Super Bowl," as they hint about Frito-Lay being an official partner of the NFL and the big game. This ad will run from Jan. 20 until the Super Bowl in February.

Dive Insight:

Marketing built around Frito-Lay's portfolio of snack brands is a mainstay for the marketer, but this is the first time signature brands Lay's, Tostitos, Cheetos and Doritos are appearing together in a football-themed commercial, according to press materials. Running a snack-oriented campaign during college football season and in the run up to the Super Bowl could help the brand engage millennials — who research shows over index when it comes to preferring snacking to meals. The strategy is also a way to drive some excitement for Frito-Lay's partnership with the NFL at a time when there is strong interest in Super Bowl advertising, from both consumers and marketers. 

Frito-Lay's U.S. Snack Index points to the football playoffs season being an especially popular time for consumers to purchase snacks to eat at home and to share at with friends, with Super Bowl Sunday generating the highest retail sales for snacks at grocery stores across the country. Ninety percent of people plan to purchase at least one snack and 80% plan to have potato chips or tortilla chips on hand, per the research.

All the available ad spots during the Super Bowl have sold out already, pointing to how major brands are betting on popular live TV events like the big game to get their message in front of a wide audience at a time when TV viewership more generally is fragmenting as cord-cutting grows. 

Super Bowl ads not only attract the eyeballs on game day, many of these ads have a shelf live throughout the year on YouTube. Six out of 10 most-viewed ads on YouTube in their end-of-year leaderboard were launched as Super Bowl ads. The high viewership of these ads suggests that these highly produced and expensive spots are popular with consumers looking for short entertaining digital video to watch when they have a few minutes of free time.

The football-themed Frito-Lay campaign comes on the heels of the marketer's first holiday campaign, which includes a parody of the well-known song "Favorite Things" from "The Sound of Music" in a two-minute music video starring actress Anna Kendrick. Together these efforts are the latest example of how parent PepsiCo is betting heavily on marketing to help it drive sales, a tactic that appears so far to be producing positive results.