As Pepsi winds down celebrations of its 125th year, it has called in a big celebrity partner to “think small.”
The cola brand tapped longtime partner and former National Basketball Association legend Shaquille O’Neal to front a new campaign for its mini can. The creative is both a juxtaposition to the retired 7’2” baller’s height and a clever callback to his previous spots in the 1990s as the face of Pepsi’s massive “Big Slam” bottle.
Further nodding to the era is the hero video, “I Wish,” in which O’Neal dreams of a world where he was “a little bit smaller”—a reversal of his Big Slam stance. The soundtrack is a reimagined version of Skee-Lo’s 1995 hit of the same name, in which he raps about being “taller.”
A montage of O’Neal in various size-challenged scenarios—a few harkening back to the 1993 spot—is accompanied by Skee-Lo lyricizing his frustrations in the same cadence of the original song: “I wish I was like 5’4”, ‘cause when I’m with my tall crew, we could just fit through … almost any door.”