Uncle Drew Wins the Game for Pepsi Max
I have to admit, I’m occasionally baffled by sports advertisements. But Pepsi Max has scored big with its Uncle Drew video, and it’s not hard to see why.
The short film clocks in at nearly five minutes, and viewers seem to be taking in most of that. There’s a mystery there: who is Uncle Drew, and how can this old, out-of-shape fellow play basketball so well? The answer is that it’s Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving, made up, dressed up and playing a great part.
The full ad goes into the whole thing, telling Uncle Drew’s story and then showing us all how it came together. That alone has brought in just shy of ten million views. And now that Pepsi Max is airing it in pieces on television (drawing out the suspense in the process,) it’s reaching out to an ever-larger audience.
It seems like quite the length to go to in order to promote the brand’s message: “a zero calorie cola in disguise.” But viewers don’t seem to mind. The video has over 37,000 likes and about 700 dislikes—hard to argue with numbers like that.
