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In order to encourage college basketball fans to get their March Madness brackets in for a chance to win $100,000, Pepsi is using “A.I.” to offer “the Answer(s),” in its DraftKings Zero Right Bracket Challenge.
Well … sort of.
In “A.I. Can Do That?,” basketball fans of a certain age will immediately get the joke when Basketball Hall of Famer Allen Iverson appears onscreen, after an office worker offers to help his colleague fill out her bracket with the use of AI.
As he sends a text to demonstrate, the camera cuts to Iverson playing video games, when his play is interrupted by the incoming text inquiry.
“I can’t always be the answer,” Iverson sighs, as he uses a dart and his famed precision shooting to make a random (and possibly losing) pick.
Long before A.I. stood for artificial intelligence and became a common tool to seek solutions to many different problems, the NBA great and NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament veteran held the distinction of being the original “A.I.” Fans and sports commentators often referred to him by his initials or his other famous nickname, “The Answer,” for his uncanny ability to respond to opposing teams with his scoring prowess.
The spot’s clever word play functions as a bridge to a generational gap, with older and younger fans coming together to poke fun at each other, and Iverson fully embracing the joke.
Building on success
Produced by CLS (the brand’s in-house creative studio) and Direct Focus, the spot marks the second year of the DraftKings challenge, which begins March 18 and runs through April 8. Fans must submit their “Zero Brackets” by March 21 to participate.
“[Iverson’s] history in both collegiate and professional basketball made him the perfect representative of the program—and of course it didn’t hurt that one of his nicknames is AI (enabling this fun play on words),” Pepsi chief marketing officer Todd Kaplan told ADWEEK.
“Given all of the discussion these days about AI and the fact that I’m sure some people will try to use the power of AI to inform their bracket selections, we thought it would be fun to use a play on words with AI by bringing back the original AI, Allen Iverson, to underscore the point that even with all of this technology, people will still struggle to get their picks right,” he added.
