Ad Track: Pepsi hopes Earnhardt drives laps around A-B

ByABC News
January 14, 2008, 1:04 AM

NEW YORK -- NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt Jr. will go bumper-to-bumper with his former backer before the Feb. 17 Daytona 500 if he makes the starting grid in a Feb. 3 Super Bowl ad for the company sponsoring his new ride.

"There's only a few Super Bowl spots and it's limited on what celebrities get chosen; after a while, you start to understand the competition between the brands," Earnhardt said by phone from a commercial shoot in Los Angeles, where he said he and a crew of 30 took over a "nice woman's café."

"You start to see how big a deal it is not to bomb," he said. "It's important to be at the top of the list. When they go out and spend all this dang money, they don't want to bomb out."

Pepsi shot two ads with the NASCAR star and they're in a pool of ads in testing to see which will get a piece of its two minutes of in-game ad time. With that time valued at about $10 million and more than 90 million people expected to be watching, Pepsi is testing to see if they are game-ready. Either way, the Earnhardt ads will air in the telecast of the Daytona 500.

But Pepsi and Earnhardt hope his ads will help them to a Super Bowl victory lap in USA TODAY's 20th annual Ad Meter real-time rating of the ads on game day.

Pepsi marketers think Earnhardt's appeal can help the Amp ads top soft-drink rival Coca-Cola and end Anheuser-Busch's Super Bowl Ad Meter winning streak. A-B has taken the checkered flag for the most-liked ad for nine games. Before Anheuser-Busch began its Ad Meter run, Pepsi reigned as king of Big Game ads for six consecutive Super Sundays.