The Super Bowl commercials are known to push the envelope, but CBS said that SodaStream went too far in one of their ads bashing two big drink companies in Pepsi and Coke.
The company makes soda-making machines and created an ad that challenged two big soda companies in Pepsi and Coca-Cola, but apparently that was no good for CBS, considering the two companies are big advertisers during the game.
"SodaStream's newest spot dubbed 'Game Changer,' created specifically for the Super Bowl, was rejected last week by CBS," a SodaStream spokesman wrote in an e-mail statement to The Huffington Post. "Because SodaStream is a direct competitor of the Big Soda brands that tend to be ubiquitous during the Super Bowl, the rejection of one of the company's proposed ads, which takes aim at Big Soda, is perhaps not surprising."
Pepsi sponsored the halftime show at the game and both Coke and Pepsi had numerous commercials on during the game. The company re-worked the commercial and it received CBS's approval, but the banned ad has gone viral and may have brought the company even more attention than when the ad was banned.
According to the Daily Beast: "SodaStream has a pretty basic and nonoffensive business. It's a bubbly-water-making system that consists of a device, plastic bottles, and containers of CO2. SodaStream also sells syrups so you can add flavor to your soda."
Commercials cost a ton of money for the Super Bowl and in 2013 a 30-second spot hit a record high of at least $4 million, blowing past last year's record of $3.5 million.
The news came out after Alex Bogusky tweeted that CBS had rejected the Super Bowl spot he was working on for SodaStream.
CBS did not respond to requests to comment on the story. Pepsi and Coke also did not return requests.
"Our ad confronts the beverage industry and its arguably outdated business model," SodaStream's CEO Daniel Birnbaum said in a statement. "One day we will look back on plastic soda bottles the way we now view cigarettes."
"We really tried to comply with the standards" set by CBS, he said to Adage.com. At the same time, he added, "We were taking it to a new level, and that's the level where they apparently judged to be going too far."
"Bummed," Mr. Bogusky, famous for his work at CP&B, tweeted Friday morning. "CBS rejected the SodaStream Super Bowl commercial I was working on. But SodaStream is still in the game with an older spot we tweaked."
Check above for VIDEO of the ad that the company put out.
