Frito-Lay Will Play out a Groundhog Day Flashback on ABC All Day Today

Feb. 1, 2024

ABC TV will allow the first-ever daylong sponsorship opportunity with eight hauntingly similar ads for different Lay’s chips.

Dave Fusaro

While most of their efforts are focused on that big football game in two weeks (we’re not allowed to say Super Bowl), the marketing departments at PepsiCo and Frito-Lay did manage to come up with an unconventional Ground Hog Day advertising program to run on ABC TV all day today.

Eight custom ads spotlighting eight flavors of Frito-Lay chips will “bring viewers into a questionable time loop where [actor Stephen] Tobolowsky experiences the ‘same’ day over and over again with the only variation being a different chip flavor,” said a news release.

There will be eight different ads featuring eight flavors of Frito-Lay chips.

Eight ads in all will highlight different flavors of Frito-Lay chips.

[You get it?]

“Disney has sold one-third of all of Friday's national advertising inventory on ABC to PepsiCo's Frito-Lay so that the snacking giant can run - and run again - eight different commercials for Lay's potato chips,” wrote Variety news. They show "Tobolowsky going through a scenario similar to that from the 1993 comedy ‘Groundhog Day,’ in which he is stuck repeating his actions in a time loop - with a different flavor of Lay's in each run-through (and a growing sense of desperation).”

The ads will air today during ABC’s Good Morning America, GMA3, General Hospital, Shark Tank, 20/20 and Jimmy Kimmel Live. This marks the first time Disney, ABC’s parent firm, has offered an exclusive sponsorship opportunity featuring a brand suite across an entire day.

It will be interesting to see if people who didn’t spend all day watching those programs and didn’t see all eight spots will get the joke. Maybe they’re best viewed together; you can watch all of them in one shot on YouTube here.

The concept was developed in collaboration with Ryan Reynolds’ production and marketing company Maximum Effort and Jimmy Kimmel’s creative lab Kimmelot. This marks the fourth time that Maximum Effort and Kimmelot.

Did we mention there will be eight ads featuring different flavors of Frito-Lay chips?

Neither "I Got You Babe" nor "The Pennsylvania Polka" plays in the background. (Sigh.)

The spots also will run on Hulu.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.