The Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show was the most-watched 12 minutes in entertainment, averaging over 100M concurrent viewers globally. For Super Bowl LVI, Pepsi — the title sponsor from 2012 to 2022 — challenged WillowTree to create a companion digital experience that would give consumers unprecedented access to the event, putting Pepsi front and center on a day where brands fiercely compete for consumer mindshare.
Starting with a blank sheet of paper and driving toward an immovable deadline, WillowTree led a series of ideation and rapid prototyping workshops to identify opportunities to engage fans through a multi-week campaign in the run-up to the big game. Multidisciplinary teams brought rough sketches to life through high-fidelity mock-ups and breakthrough ideas like a fully-immersive, second screen experience rose to the top of the list.
With the launch of the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show app in December — only shortly after ideation began — Pepsi engaged fans weekly with more than 30 in-app content drops ranging from artist merch giveaways to exclusive interactive photo filters built in partnership with Snap.
On game day, an in-app exclusive — the Pepsi Ultra Pass — granted fans access to a groundbreaking second screen viewing experience that brought fans on stage alongside legendary hip-hop performers. We engineered the app and back-end infrastructure to handle the load, and the experience was immersive, fun, and share-worthy — cementing Pepsi as the most talked about brand of Super Bowl LVI.
