ATLANTA — Two teams unexpectedly struck a sugary truce on Wednesday for the Super Bowl, but the goodwill looked wobbly.
PepsiCo Inc., in a surprise marketing stunt tied to this weekend's Big Game, briefly placed a statue of its founder, Caleb Bradham, beside a life-size bronze statue of Coca-Cola founder John Pemberton, that is located outside the World of Coca-Cola in downtown Atlanta. The spot is near where Super Bowl pregame activities are taking place and is ground zero for dueling marketing by the ferociously competitive cola brands.
Pepsi tweeted “Hey @CocaCola thanks for being such gracious hosts for #SBLIII this week. We agree #TogetherIsBeautiful so we’d like to get our founders together for a celebratory cheers to declare a temporary #ColaTruce for the day. See you at @WorldofCocaCola soon!”
In a quick, stealth photo shoot, Pepsi made it appear the statues were about to clink glasses of their respective colas.
Coke, which hadn’t been given advance notice, apparently played along with its archrival.
“We are going to welcome them with a Coke and a smile,” Coca-Cola spokeswoman Kate Hartman said.
By then the statue had been removed. On a return run, Pepsi apparently felt as if it had gotten the cold shoulder. It tweeted: “Hey @CocaCola we swung by but it looks like you weren’t into having us over today…that doesn’t feel very #TogetherIsBeautiful.”
The hashtag is a reference to a new Coke TV commercial; in which different animated people come together. It is slated to air just before Sunday's game.
New York-based PepsiCo Inc. is an official Super Bowl sponsor; Atlanta-based Coke isn’t. In recent weeks, Pepsi unleashed
[ a blue wave of advertising ]
in Coke’s Big Red hometown.
[ Coke responded ]
with a football-themed exhibit at the World of Coca-Cola, plans to light up its nearby headquarters in red and funding for free admission for a month at the nearby National Center for Civil and Human Rights.