Pepsi Wild Cherry Gets Wild With a Lullaby Remix in 2024
Pepsi's "Get Wild" campaign is a January 2024 national advertising push for Pepsi Wild Cherry that debuted two 30-second commercials during NFL Wild Card Weekend across the United States, using a humorous lullaby remix to position the flavored cola as a small, flavorful act of rebellion in the constrained rhythms of adult life.
Launched on January 11, 2024, "Get Wild" marked Pepsi Wild Cherry's first national advertising campaign in three years, ending a broadcast silence that had followed the brand's 2021 "Cherries Wild" game-show partnership with Fox, as reported by The Drum. The campaign comprises two commercials — "Nursery Rhymez" and "#1 Fan" — and spans national television, YouTube, social media, podcasts, and mobile gaming, reflecting the PepsiCo Beverages Collection's intent to reach digitally native consumers wherever they spend time. The creative work was produced by VaynerMedia and directed by Kate Hollowell of Epoch Films, according to reporting by Beverage Industry and the Digital Agency Network.
In the United States, the campaign's central execution, "Nursery Rhymez," adapts Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz's "Get Low" into a domestic parenting scenario in which a mother rocks her baby to sleep, transforming a track associated with youthful excess into a tender yet comic household moment. The reframe is deliberate: Pepsi stated the campaign "shows that a sweet, flavorful sip of Pepsi Wild Cherry can inspire us to inject some of that 'wild' feeling in our new realities," as quoted by The Drum on January 11, 2024. The Clapboard Score for "Get Wild" is 69 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that lands its emotional premise with creative economy but operates within a defined tonal register rather than breaking new category ground. The PepsiCo Beverages Collection campaign positions Pepsi Wild Cherry firmly within the non-alcoholic drinks and Food and Drink landscape as a flavor-forward alternative for consumers who still want some edge in their everyday choices.
Pepsi Wild Cherry's "Get Wild" strategy is built on a consumer insight about who is actually driving flavored cola growth in the United States. Jenny Danzi, Senior Marketing Director at PepsiCo Beverages North America, confirmed to Marketing Dive on January 11, 2024, that the millennial households powering category growth "do skew female," and that women function both as shoppers for themselves and as primary household purchasers. That dual role — personal consumer and family buyer — makes the lullaby-and-toddler creative scenario more than a comedic device; it is a strategic mirror held up to the target audience's daily reality.
The broader US carbonated soft drinks market provides important context for this targeting decision. PepsiCo's Pepsi brand family held approximately 13.5% of US carbonated soft drink category volume in 2024, according to data cited by Growth Market Reports, while The Coca-Cola Company is identified as the clear global category leader in both volume and value, as noted by Market Research Future. In that competitive environment, Pepsi Wild Cherry cannot win on scale alone. The flavored cola sub-segment offers a differentiation pathway, and reaching millennial women with culturally resonant creative is a more efficient route to share growth than broad reach alone. Competitor Dr Pepper, widely recognised as a dominant force in the flavored carbonated soft drink space in the United States, makes the flavored cola lane genuinely contested territory.
Danzi developed the campaign strategy using research that identified nostalgia and remix culture as particularly high-index attributes among the millennial female target, as reported by Marketing Dive. The choice of "Get Low" — a track that carries strong generational memory for millennials — converts a familiar audio cue into an immediate emotional shortcut, reducing the cognitive distance between the ad and the consumer's own lived experience. Across the US market, this kind of culturally embedded creative has demonstrated consistent effectiveness in building brand recall within digitally native demographics.
Kate Hollowell of Epoch Films directed the "Get Wild" campaign for Pepsi Wild Cherry. Hollowell, described by multiple outlets including Beverage Industry as both a filmmaker and comedian, brought a performance-comedy sensibility to both 30-second executions that keeps the work grounded in observed human behaviour rather than aspirational fantasy. Her prior credential is notable: Hollowell was shortlisted for the 2023 Cannes Young Director Award, according to reporting by the Digital Agency Network and Beverage Industry, a recognition that signals craft-level ambition within a commercial brief.
The "Nursery Rhymez" execution is the more structurally ambitious of the two spots. It takes Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz's "Get Low" — a track defined by its rawness and volume — and recontextualises it as a whispered, tender lullaby sung by a mother over her infant. The comedic tension lives in the gap between the song's original energy and its new domestic application, and it depends entirely on performance precision. A single overplayed beat would collapse the joke. The production, handled through Epoch Films, a women-owned production company as noted by The Creative's Room, maintains a visual register that feels intimate and observational — naturalistic lighting, tight framing — which amplifies the warmth of the parenting scenario without undermining the absurdist premise.
The "#1 Fan" execution extends the campaign's core theme of constrained adult wildness into a different domestic or social context, providing tonal range within the same strategic framework. Both spots were distributed across national television, YouTube, social media, podcasts, and mobile gaming channels, according to reporting by the Digital Agency Network and Beverage Industry, demonstrating that the creative was built with platform versatility in mind from the production stage. On YouTube, the "Nursery Rhymez" video accumulated over 69,000 views, 329 likes, and 90 comments, metrics that indicate genuine audience engagement with the creative rather than passive exposure.
The "Nursery Rhymez" execution of Pepsi's "Get Wild" campaign recorded 69,231 views, 329 likes, and 90 comments on YouTube, figures that reflect a targeted digital distribution strategy rather than a mass viral ambition. These metrics, drawn from the campaign's YouTube channel activity, point to an audience that engaged substantively with the content — the comment volume relative to views suggests the lullaby remix premise generated genuine conversation rather than passive scrolling.
National television placement during NFL Wild Card Weekend on January 13, 2024, as reported by Beverage Industry and the Digital Agency Network, provided the campaign's highest-reach moment and aligned the brand with one of the US advertising calendar's most-watched sports broadcasting events. That broadcast debut gave the two 30-second commercials immediate national exposure across the United States, a platform that YouTube metrics alone would not capture. The multi-channel architecture — spanning television, YouTube, social media, podcasts, and mobile gaming — was designed to extend reach across the diffuse media habits of millennial consumers in the US market.
The Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 for "Get Wild" reflects a campaign that executes its core creative idea with clarity and tonal control. The lullaby remix device is memorably specific, the casting and direction are precise, and the strategic targeting of millennial women is legible in every creative choice. The score acknowledges that the campaign operates within a defined tonal and strategic lane — effective and well-crafted rather than category-redefining — which is an honest assessment of what a flavored cola brand repositioning in a mature, highly competitive US non-alcoholic drinks market can realistically achieve in two 30-second spots.
Pepsi's Get Wild campaign promotes Pepsi Wild Cherry in the United States through two 30-second humorous commercials. Launched January 11, 2024, it repositions "wild" as the small, flavour-forward pleasures available within the real constraints of adult and millennial family life, using a lullaby remix of a well-known hip-hop track as its creative engine.
The Get Wild campaign launched on January 11, 2024. Its two 30-second commercials debuted nationally on January 13, 2024, during NFL Wild Card Weekend in the United States. The campaign also ran across YouTube, social media, podcasts, and mobile gaming, according to reporting by Beverage Industry and the Digital Agency Network.
Kate Hollowell of Epoch Films directed the Nursery Rhymez commercial. Hollowell is a filmmaker and comedian who was shortlisted for the 2023 Cannes Young Director Award, according to Beverage Industry. Epoch Films is a women-owned production company, as noted by The Creative's Room. VaynerMedia served as the campaign's creative agency.
The Get Wild campaign targets millennial women in the United States. Jenny Danzi, Senior Marketing Director at PepsiCo Beverages North America, told Marketing Dive on January 11, 2024, that flavored cola growth is driven by millennial households that skew female, and that women are both personal consumers and primary household purchasers of the product.
Pepsi Wild Cherry's last major national campaign before Get Wild was Cherries Wild, a 2021 game-show partnership with Fox, as reported by The Drum. Get Wild, launched in January 2024, represented the brand's first national advertising campaign in three years, marking a significant return to broadcast and multi-channel investment in the United States.
Pepsi's Get Wild campaign received a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that executes its lullaby remix creative idea with precision and tonal clarity, targeting millennial women effectively across the US non-alcoholic drinks category, while operating within a defined strategic lane rather than redefining it entirely.
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