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Pepsi Hyped for Halftime Contest Comes to Rochester
Our hometown, Rochester, NY, has been selected as the hometown winner in the Pepsi Hyped for Halftime, Hype Your Hometown Contest. This national contest invited people to bring halftime to their hometown and also win tickets to this year’s Pepsi Super Bowl XLIX Halftime show featuring Katy Perry.
Haley Biemiller a 19 year old from Irondequoit (a Rochester suburb) calls herself Katy Perry’s biggest fan. She organized her family and friends to enter the contest more than 500 times. Pepsi’s judges chose Haley and 17 other grand prize winners from Rochester. They will each choose a guest for a total of 39 lucky people who will be receiving round-trip airfare to Arizona, 5 day/3 night hotel accommodations at a Scottsdale resort and passes to be on the field and to see Katy Perry during the Super Bowl Halftime show in the University of Phoenix Stadium.
The contest invited participants to submit either photos or videos that matched the Hyped for Halftime theme. Each participant was allowed up to 5 submissions a day during the contest period which ran from November 26 – December 29, 2014. So Haley set up a photo studio in her house where she took hundreds of photos of her local group that included Pepsi products and “Hyped for Halftime” posters and props. The group made sure everyone submitted the maximum of five entries per day, every day.
All approved submissions are still displayed in the contest’s photo gallery on the website. Lindsay Balzano, one of the winners also from Irondequoit was quoted as saying “When we looked at the site, we made up a good majority of all the collective photos,” she said. “We had 86 pages of just Rochester people of 126 total pages.” Lindsay received the phone call notifying her that she was a winner while out to dinner with Hailey and another friend. “I got so excited and I couldn’t hear because I was so happy about it,” she said. “Haley’s face got bright red and she started crying. It was indescribable.”
The submissions were judged by an independent panel based on originality and creativity; embodiment of the “Hyped for Halftime” campaign; total hometown participation; and public voting. Rochester submitted a total 509 entries, which was selected as the Hometown Prize winner.
So now Pepsi is bringing the hype to Rochester. This Sunday, Jan. 18, they will be hosting a free concert in downtown Rochester featuring pop/hip-hop duo Nico & Vinz. The duo is best known for their single, “Am I Wrong”. According to this Democrat & Chronicle article in our local newspaper, Pepsi will also be delivering some extra hype with surprises popping up around Rochester leading up to the event including a mobile Hype Squad and vending machines that will offer a chance to win VIP passes or meet and greets.
During last week’s playoff game on Saturday between the Patriots and the Ravens, Katy Perry announced that she invited Lenny Kravitz to be one of her special guests joining her during the Super Bowl Halftime show. She hinted that there may be others to announce soon. More than 115 million viewers in the U.S. watched last year’s show.
This weekend we have two more great football games between four teams to watch. In my last Super Bowl post I mentioned that I was routing for the Green Bay Packers who are now moving on in the Road to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately the season ended for the Cowboys, Bronco’s, Panthers and the Ravens. However, the excitement for next season for the Buffalo Bills has risen tremendously here with the announcement that Rex Ryan is the new head coach! Can’t wait.
Yes, we are based in Rochester, NY and our company had nothing to do with this contest.