SodaStream Ad Banned From Super Bowl: Unaired Commercial Goes Viral Online (VIDEO)
The SodaStream ad millions of viewers saw during the Super Bowl introduced the new method of carbonating drinks, but it was nowhere near as controversial as the second, banned commercial. The second ad took on soda giants Coke and Pepsi, was banned, then went viral on the internet, picking up millions of views.
SodaStream's ad begins with Coke and Pepsi delivery drivers who show up to a supermarket at the same time. Before long, the two men are competing to deliver their cases of soda first, but before either can make it to the brightly lit double doors of the store, their bottles promptly explode.
"With SodaStream, we could have saved 500 million bottles on game day alone," the announcer says while the sleek machine is shown. "If you love the bubbles, set them free."
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CBS, who aired the Ravens-49ers Super Bowl game, refused to air the advertisement, possibly because of their deals with the big drinkmakers. Pepsi sponsored the halftime show, and Coke ran commercials during the game. Instead, the network allowed SodaStream's other ad— this one has unidentifiable bottles of soda exploding, not Coke or Pepsi— to air.
However, SodaStream, a smaller company based in Tel Aviv, Israel, isn't taking the rejection lying down. They certainly paid a hefty amount for their spot—prices ran up to $4 million for 30 seconds during the Super Bowl, according to Fox News— and also pointed to plastic bottling as "outdated."
"Our ad confronts the beverage industry and its arguably outdated business model," Sodastream CEO Daniel Birunbaum said in a statement. "One day we will look back on plastic soda bottles the way we now view cigarettes."
Their answer to the controversy over the ad was to post it on YouTube. Now, the banned commercial has gone viral, picking up over 3.9 million views.
"We understand that the … ad may be uncomfortable to the big soda companies, but we are proud of the ad and the truth that it brings to the American consumer," Ilan Nacasch, chief marketing officer for SodaStream, told CNN.
