While filming, the spot came with a unique set of logistical difficulties—as PepsiCo described during an exclusive behind-the-scenes look with ADWEEK—adding Putellas to Lay’s roster of all-time soccer greats wasn’t among them.
“Alexia was an obvious choice for us because she is the best in the sport … and when you see the passion behind the fans in Barcelona, [they] were sometimes rushing past Thierry to go to Alexia,” said Alexis Porter, global vp of Lay’s, of the campaign’s newest member. “Alexia is kind of breathing this passion into the sport, and the momentum of currently playing the game and having the fans on her side is unreal.”
The challenge behind the chips
The “No Lay’s, No Game” campaign has routinely tested both the brand’s concept and the public and production team’s capacity for its execution. Porter points out that the first two legs took international soccer superstars through neighborhoods and a packed stadium, but bouncing from pub to pub provided its own challenges.
In Barcelona alone, this latest Lay’s ad required 175 crew members and 13 vans to carry equipment and capture the pub denizens’ reactions on the first shot.
“You have all the cameras because you only get one chance. The surprise is only one time when you walk into the bar, and you saw how many bars and pubs we went into,” Porter said. “I spent a lot of time in a van behind them trying to see what the cameras were seeing, and it was coordinated. There were no do-overs.”
PepsiCo informed pubs that the Lay’s brand was coming and that a celebrity could potentially be coming along with them, but that was the only information they were given. As a result, in Miami, even the large accompanying crew occasionally dealt with fans running to catch up with Messi and Suárez after their pub visit.
That dearth of advance notice also meant that Lay’s was relying heavily on pubs for one portion of the spot: actually supplying Lay’s to customers. Lay’s did see pubs with product beforehand, so the spot captured familiar scenes from the campaign to that point: Fans darting around looking for a stray bag of Lay’s or bargaining with soccer legends to accept a big screen or other form of chip instead.
