The Apple & Pepsi promotional duo are at it again, with the pair officially announcing a renewed relationship.
The refreshed giveaway will once again coincide with the Super Bowl, giving consumers another tasty advertising campaign to look for. This time around, the prize pool is much larger, with 200 million free downloads being offered. Additionally, 2,000 silver iPods will also be handed out, with Apple looking to cement its lead in the portable mp3 player race. One in three specially-marked Pepsi caps will contain winning download codes, with the rare drink delivering a free iPod.
Apple comes into this campaign with several painful lessons learned from 2004, with miscues defining the previous effort. Promotional Pepsi bottles were mostly delivered late, killing valuable momentum from a massive Super Bowl ad campaign. Moreover, winning caps could be detected by tilting the Pepsi bottles a certain angle, causing consumers to easily cherry-pick winners. But those blunders come with the territory, with Apple and Pepsi likely to execute a smoother campaign this time around.
Meanwhile, the story that is iPod+iTunes has grown tremendously in the last year, with Apple still harboring a commanding lead in both paid downloads and device sales. That has been partly attributable to an ultra-aggressive promotional spend, with the Super Bowl no exception. But others are starting to catch on, with competitors like Creative dropping serious cash on its 2005 comeback bid.