Pepsi gets Super Bowl campaign started early

NEW YORK — Super Bowl XLIX is still more than two months away, but Pepsi is drumming up an audience for the halftime show.

Pepsi has been a long-time Super Bowl commercial sponsor and is sponsoring the halftime show for the third time. It will feature singer Katy Perry. Super Bowl XLIX is slated to be played Feb. 1, 2015, in Phoenix and will be broadcast on NBC.

It is starting its marketing blitz for the show with an ad placed during the NFL game between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers on Thanksgiving Day. It depicts a Blake Shelton concert that Pepsi sponsored for veterans on an aircraft carrier near Corpus Christi, Texas. The town was selected because it is in the middle of the country.

“There’s half time and then there’s a Pepsi halftime,” a voiceover states.

Meanwhile, Pepsico Inc., based in Purchase, New York, is kicking off a contest called “Hype Your Hometown” that lets people apply to win tickets to see the halftime show during the Super Bowl or win a halftime-like show in their hometown.

The Super Bowl is advertising’s largest showcase. More than 115 million viewers in the U.S. watched last season’s show.

So far Pepsi is saying mum on what it actually plans to do for the Super Bowl itself.

BY MAE ANDERSON, AP Business Writer