Pepsi 'The Choice': Taika Waititi Sends the Polar Bear to a Rival
Comparative advertising is one of the oldest tools in the category playbook and one of the most dangerous. Done poorly, it elevates the competitor by naming them. Done well, it takes an icon belonging to the rival and makes it yours. Pepsi’s Super Bowl LX spot, directed by Taika Waititi, does the second thing — and does it with the Coca-Cola polar bear.
The Concept
“The Choice” opens on an unmistakable image: the Coca-Cola polar bear, the icon of the rival brand’s Christmas advertising since 1993. In a blind taste test, the bear chooses Pepsi Zero Sugar. The reveal triggers an existential crisis. The bear wanders, displaced, through a journey of self-discovery that ends with it choosing its own identity — and Pepsi.
The concept is extraordinarily bold. Taking a competitor’s mascot and using it as the subject of your own advertising is legally complex, creatively risky, and culturally loaded. The fact that it worked — that the ad landed without litigation and with genuine audience response — is a measure of how well the execution was calibrated.
Taika Waititi’s Contribution
Waititi is operating here in the same comic register he’s used throughout his film career: warmly absurdist, capable of finding genuine pathos in ridiculous situations, unwilling to underline jokes. The polar bear’s existential crisis is played completely straight, which is why it’s funny. A winking treatment would have collapsed the premise immediately.
The director’s ability to generate sympathy for an animated bear undergoing a brand identity crisis is not nothing. By the end of the spot, you’re rooting for the bear to figure out who it is — which means, by extension, you’re rooting for Pepsi. That’s the entire job of the advertising, and Waititi does it without ever letting the film feel like advertising.
What the Execution Risks — and Avoids
The risks with this concept are obvious. Using another brand’s mascot invites perception of desperation — if Pepsi is strong enough to stand on its own, why does it need to reference Coke? The counterargument, which the execution bears out, is that the reference doesn’t name Coke with anxiety. It appropriates the Coke bear with confidence. The tone is not “we’re better than them.” It is “even their mascot agrees with us.”
That is a fundamentally different posture, and Waititi’s direction maintains it. The bear is never mocked. The bear’s crisis is treated with the same seriousness (and therefore the same comedy) as any genuine identity crisis. The Coke brand is referenced by implication rather than by hostile name-calling.
The Category Context
The Pepsi-Coke rivalry is one of the defining commercial narratives of the 20th century. Pepsi’s “Pepsi Challenge” taste tests in the 1980s established comparative advertising as the brand’s primary strategic tool, and “The Choice” returns to that lineage while updating it substantially.
The update matters. A straight taste-test ad in 2026 would feel like a historical artifact. By wrapping the taste test in an existential character journey, Pepsi preserves the strategic clarity of the comparison while giving it enough narrative texture to function as entertainment rather than proof point.
The Verdict
“The Choice” is the kind of Super Bowl ad that gets remembered — not because of a special effect or a celebrity cameo, but because the idea is clean and the execution is committed. The polar bear is the right choice of character because it is genuinely beloved, which means its defection to Pepsi carries genuine weight. Nobody mourns the departure of a mascot they didn’t care about.
Client: Pepsi Agency: PepsiCo Content Studio / BBDO Director: Taika Waititi Year: 2026
