Leveraging Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters, Pepsi celebrated the many different moments of Gaga’s storied career – encouraging fans to dress in notorious Gaga looks from years gone by, and selecting iconic Gaga moments to help count down the days to her largest performance ever at the Pepsi Zero Sugar Super Bowl LI Halftime Show.

November-December 2016

Guest of Honor Program: Little Monsters submitted short films on social media explaining why they’re a fan of Lady Gaga. 50 fans won sidelines passes to the Halftime show.

January-February 2017

Behind the Scenes: 5 films shot behind the scenes showed Gaga’s preparation for the world’s biggest stage.

Fan Countdown: Gaga fans, NFL athletes and influencers counted down the 14 days leading to the Pepsi Zero Sugar Halftime show with video releases aimed to inspire fans to join in the countdown.

February 2017

For the Fans: On Super Bowl Sunday fans following #PepsiHalftime had the opportunity to win Lady Gaga and NFL prizes.

• Lady Gaga’s performance was the most-watched musical event of all-time and the most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance in history.

• Pepsi was the most mentioned brand across all social media.

• Pepsi fan engagement had surpassed all estimates – achieving an unprecedented 27% share of voice – the next closest brand had a 9% share.

• Gaga behind-the-scenes footage was viewed over 11 million minutes.

• Fans created and posted over 27,000 fan videos

• Fan Countdown content drove 233 million total impressions across Facebook and Twitter, and captured over 1 million engagements.

• 305,000 fans engaged #ForTheFans on game day and were entered for the chance to win were entered for the chance to win major Lady Gaga and NFL prizes.

• Pepsi exceeded its goal with nearly 6 billion earned impressions and $121 million in ad equivalency.

This program was designed to create a social narrative – leveraging Paid, Owned, and Earned distribution with a consistent narrative leading up to a live event. The conversations generated in social through this content helped achieve Share of Voice numbers that ranked #1 throughout the entire day of Super Bowl LI – even before the Halftime Show started. With no traditional television spot, this helped create a robust narrative that showed the power of Social to drive brand reach and relevance.

Our strategy was based on an insight that Lady Gaga’s past personas would fuel excitement and garner acceptance for her more mainstream halftime show performance. By celebrating Gaga’s body of work, subverting from it and building upon it, Gaga’s super fans helped amplify her voice to a broader audience and usher her into Prime Time.

As a fan of all fans, Pepsi’s role in the social space is to be the microphone to help give fans a voice and amplify their thoughts, feelings and connections. By creating universal moments that could be shared and amplified by Gaga fans and football fans alike, we served as a catalyst that sparked millions upon millions of people to participate and express themselves however they wish.

Pepsi’s mission is to flood the world with joy. And there’s nothing like the joy that comes from being a fan. For over 100 years, Pepsi has long been the Fan of Fans, helping to inspire and empower people around the world. In “Lady Gaga Super Bowl activation,” we engage Lady Gaga’s Little Monster fan base leading up to, during, and after #PepsiHalftime to build excitement for the show through exclusive content, giveaways and an opportunity to watch the show from the Super Bowl sidelines.