Pepsi is putting huge dollars into the marketing of Amp and Dale Jr. Amp's sales doubled last year and Pepsi is certain that Amp will become the choice beverage of goal-oriented males 18-34. "Amp is about bringing your ‘A’ game whether it is going 200 miles per hour on the race track or going to your meeting," said Maurice Herrera, Amp’s marketing director. "Energy drinks were about getting jacked up for the night. Now it’s about busy people who want a boost of energy."
Pepsi has made Dale Jr the 'face' of Amp and has created two commercials featuring Dale Jr that will probably debut during the Super Bowl. One commercial apparently has Dale battling a gorilla and the other has him racing camels with tag lines such as, "Amp yourself" and "Fuel your passion" being used.
Not only that but Pepsi is introducing a Dale Jr 12oz collector can series in the late spring/early summer and apparently will sell them in Dale Jr packaging through WalMart in 8-packs at $11.88 each incorporating Dale's car number (88) into the price. There will also be 88 Amp Dale Jr show cars touring around this summer too.
"Pepsi spent $10.2 million on media for Amp for the first 11 months of 2007 ... (this) year, "we’re going to play big, Amp will get a tremendous amount of focus," said Herrera" - Kenneth Hein.
With this being said, it is doubtful that SoBe No Fear will be getting any extra funds for promotion which means Boris Said will be limited in the number of races he runs this year again. And with Amp getting a 'tremendous amount of focus' and dollars don't expect to see Dale and Boris working together in special Pepsi marketing promotions in the near future either.
For more info regarding Pepsi's promotion of Amp please see Kenneth Hein's entire article at technologymarketing.com, it goes into greater detail than I do here.