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BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer Takes the Super Bowl with The Pitch
"The Pitch" is a 30-second Super Bowl LIII television commercial created by agency Bullish for BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer, aired in the United States in February 2019, making it the first hard seltzer advertisement ever to appear during the Super Bowl, according to VinePair.
The spot arrived at a pivotal moment for the brand. BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer had only just relaunched under that name in 2019, replacing the earlier SpikedSeltzer identity following Anheuser-Busch InBev's acquisition of the original brand in 2016, as documented by Ads of the World and Bullish. The rebranding drew directly on the brand's new identity: the name Bon & Viv references the French expression "bon vivant," and the campaign gave that idea a literal, fantastical form through two fictional mermaid founders named Bonnie and Vivian.
In "The Pitch," Bonnie and Vivian swim into an underwater boardroom to present their zero-sugar, alcoholic seltzer to a panel of sharks — a direct and deliberate parody of the American reality television programme Shark Tank. The narrative functioned on two registers simultaneously. Chelsea Phillips, Vice President of AB InBev's Beyond Beer division, articulated this dual purpose when she stated, as reported by The Drum, that "the spot itself [was] not only a pitch to the investors, the sharks, but a pitch to the American public." In the United States, where the Super Bowl consistently attracts the largest single-day television audiences of the year, choosing that platform for a debut hard seltzer commercial represented a significant strategic commitment. The campaign contains one film asset and was submitted to industry archives including Clapboard.com, where it carries a Clapboard Score of 66/100.
BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer entered the 2019 Super Bowl as a challenger brand in a rapidly expanding but highly concentrated category. In the United States, White Claw and Truly together controlled approximately 80 percent of hard seltzer retail market share in 2019, according to VinePair, with White Claw alone holding an estimated 50 to 58 percent of that market. Against those two dominant competitors, BON & VIV needed a moment of cultural disruption rather than incremental media presence.
The strategic logic behind "The Pitch" reflects a broader truth about the alcoholic drinks category in the United States: established shelf position and distribution matter, but brand personality can accelerate trial in ways that promotional spend alone cannot. By selecting the Super Bowl — a platform where advertising is itself a form of entertainment and cultural conversation — Bullish and BON & VIV attempted to compress what might otherwise have taken years of brand-building into a single, nationally shared moment. As reported by The Drum on January 24, 2019, the advertisement was positioned as the brand's debut Super Bowl appearance, giving it inherent news value ahead of broadcast.
The zero-sugar positioning embedded in the creative was equally deliberate. Across the United States, consumer interest in lower-calorie and sugar-free alcoholic drinks had been building steadily through the late 2010s, a trend that both White Claw and Truly had already monetised. BON & VIV's decision to foreground the zero-sugar credential within a comedic, high-visibility format acknowledged that product differentiation in the food and drink category needed to be communicated quickly and memorably — particularly in a 30-second Super Bowl slot where attention is contested at premium cost.
Director Traktor, working through production company Stink Films, helmed "The Pitch" with a visual ambition unusual for a 30-second alcoholic drinks spot. The commercial's underwater boardroom setting required the kind of controlled, large-scale aquatic production that few Super Bowl commercials attempt, and the choice of cinematographer was central to realising that environment with credibility.
Dan Laustsen served as director of photography on the campaign. Laustsen's prior credits — including Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, John Wick: Chapter 2, and Crimson Peak — are documented by Muse by Clios and company3.com, and they signal a cinematographic sensibility attuned to immersive, fantastical visual worlds. Bringing that level of craft to a food and drink advertisement was a deliberate signal that "The Pitch" was not a conventional spiked seltzer commercial. The underwater sequences required both lighting design and camera work capable of rendering the fictional Bonnie and Vivian characters — and their shark-filled boardroom — as simultaneously absurd and visually coherent.
Post-production assembled an equally precise team. Editing was handled by Robert Ryang at Cut + Run, with Chris Hilk serving as assistant editor, as credited by Ads of the World and Clapboard.com. Colour grading was completed by Jaime O'Bradovich, and visual effects were produced by Eight VFX, per company3.com. On the agency side, Lauren Hertzberg served as managing director at Bullish, with Ellese Shell as agency producer, according to Ads of the World. The Shark Tank parody format gave the creative team a ready-made comedic structure — the entrepreneurial pitch, the sceptical panel, the product demonstration — that American audiences could decode instantly, allowing the underwater spectacle and the zero-sugar product message to land within a compressed running time.
No verified performance data for "The Pitch" is publicly available in terms of sales lift, brand recall scores, or measurable market share movement attributable directly to the campaign. What the public record does establish is the structural context in which the advertisement operated, and that context offers meaningful indicators of the campaign's likely effect on BON & VIV's standing in the United States alcoholic drinks market.
The decision to run the first hard seltzer Super Bowl commercial in history, as confirmed by VinePair, gave BON & VIV a category-defining moment it could not have purchased through any other media channel at equivalent scale. In the United States, the Super Bowl audience represents the broadest single simultaneous reach available to any advertiser. For a brand that had only just relaunched under the BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer name in 2019, that exposure carried disproportionate strategic value — introducing Bonnie and Vivian as brand characters, establishing the zero-sugar positioning, and differentiating the product from White Claw and Truly through tone and creative register rather than functional claims alone.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates a coherent alignment between creative concept and business objective. The Shark Tank parody format made the product pitch itself the entertainment, and the dual meaning identified by Chelsea Phillips — a pitch to sharks and a pitch to the American public — gave the spot a conceptual elegance that Super Bowl commercials in the food and drink category rarely achieve. The Clapboard Score of 66/100 reflects competent execution and cultural relevance, while indicating room for stronger measurable differentiation within an increasingly competitive spiked seltzer landscape.
"The Pitch" is a 30-second Super Bowl LIII advertisement created by agency Bullish for BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer, aired in the United States in February 2019. It features fictional mermaid founders Bonnie and Vivian pitching their zero-sugar hard seltzer to sharks in an underwater parody of the television show Shark Tank, according to VinePair and Ads of the World.
"The Pitch" was the first hard seltzer commercial ever aired during the Super Bowl, according to VinePair. BON & VIV Spiked Seltzer debuted the spot at Super Bowl LIII in February 2019, making it a category milestone for alcoholic drinks advertising in the United States at a time when White Claw and Truly dominated the market.
The commercial was directed by Traktor through production company Stink Films. Cinematography was handled by Dan Laustsen, whose prior credits include The Shape of Water and John Wick: Chapter 2, as documented by Muse by Clios. The campaign was created by agency Bullish, based in New York, with Lauren Hertzberg serving as managing director.
Bonnie and Vivian are fictional mermaid characters introduced as the brand's founders in "The Pitch." The name BON & VIV references the French expression "bon vivant," as noted by Clapboard.com. In the advertisement, the two characters pitch their zero-sugar spiked seltzer to a panel of sharks in an underwater Shark Tank parody setting.
BON & VIV used the Super Bowl to reintroduce the brand following its 2019 relaunch in the United States. Chelsea Phillips of AB InBev described the spot, as reported by The Drum, as simultaneously a pitch to investors and a pitch to the American public — using the Shark Tank format to communicate zero-sugar positioning against dominant competitors White Claw and Truly.
"The Pitch" carries a Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100 on Clapboard.com. The score reflects competent creative execution and cultural relevance within the 2019 Super Bowl commercials landscape, while indicating scope for stronger measurable differentiation in the alcoholic drinks category. The campaign was archived on Clapboard.com following its February 2019 broadcast.
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