Stories From The Streets: Pepsico's Ed Sanderson

Out Of Home advertising has always had a magic that other media can’t quite replicate. It interrupts the rush of the street, punctuates the rhythm of our days, and turns the ordinary act of moving through a city into a moment of surprise, delight or provocation. From towering digital canvases to the quiet poetry of a poster on a bus shelter, OOH works out in the real world, powerfully and publicly, to connect brands with the shared life of a community.

So let us take you on a little journey with some of the UK's most accomplished marketers as they reflect on how outdoor advertising threads through the weft of their everyday lives...and how it also propels their brand growth.

These are Stories From The Streets, a new series in partnership with the OOH media specialist Talon and a celebration of the power of OOH not just as a vital marketing platform but as a backdrop to the moments that make up our days.

Our first Story comes from Ed Sanderson, the head of media and planning at PepsiCo and a marketer with a real passion for OOH advertising. “I absolutely love outdoor," Sanderson says - and without any undue nudge from us. "The range of what you can do with it is extraordinary.”

Sanderson himself is no stranger to the complexities of media. His career has taken him from running the Apple account at MGOMD to Carat’s global client service director, heading the Mondelez, Deutsche Bank Global and Lego accounts, then global group client lead at Vizeum. Now embedded at PepsiCo he’s been turning our streets red and black with ads for Walkers and Pepsi Max.

Join us on Ed's journey.

Stories From The Street – Ed Sanderson's Journey

I’ve been thinking about all the journeys I regularly make, but this particular one feels most relevant to where I am and who I am now.

Coming home I take the little branch line from Twyford to Shiplake in Oxfordshire, where I live. Pepsico has an office in Reading and one in Farringdon, and I get to both from Twyford. From there I catch the branch line through the countryside for about seven or ten minutes to get home. It’s a beautiful little journey and when you arrive at the station you get to walk home past the river, fields, cows. Or maybe you go by the pub if the kids are there, or you go with friends who’ve got off the same train. It’s very much about that feeling of closure — leaving work behind and coming back into village life.

I’d call the village a hybrid. It has everything you’d expect — a pub, a local shop, a butcher, a cricket pitch, a garage — but it also has a train line running through it. So while it feels like a village, it’s not isolated. It’s only seven minutes to Twyford, where you can pick up the mainline, and five minutes in the other direction to Henley-on-Thames. Shiplake sits somewhere in between: countryside with a pulse, I call it. We’ve got the river 50 metres away, fields all around us, but also plenty of people our age in the village, so there’s always something going on.

We’ve been here in Shiplake for two years. We moved directly from London and have spent the last year and a half renovating the house. We’ve got two young girls and needed to move. My job is in Reading — PepsiCo’s based there — so it made sense. At the time I was a bit worried about moving from London to the countryside, but now I look back and I wouldn’t go back. There’s nothing in London we’d want now.

My little train ride home really is the decompression chamber between my two lives, the professional and the personal. I’ve definitely got two selves: my home self and my work self. People at work always joke, “Do you ever wear anything apart from shirts and chinos?”; they don’t know I wear old T-shirts and shorts with holes in them when I’m in the village. When I get onto the branch line and sit down, I just deflate. It feels like you’re shedding the shirt and chinos and starting to relax. It’s a nice way to decompress. Going the other way — into Twyford — it helps get my head ready for work again.

I’m not easy to reach with advertising. In our house we mostly watch Netflix, very little linear TV, and if we do it’s BBC. I listen to BBC Radio 2. I’ve got Spotify, but I pay for ad-free. I don’t really read newspapers, apart from the Sunday Times — I do have a subscription — but the ads there are few and far between. I rarely read magazines. I hardly ever use my laptop for anything outside of work. At home I’m very conscious about avoiding my phone. I make a point of charging it away from me in the morning, so I don’t touch it until I leave for work or sit down at my desk. So from about 6.30 until 8.30 I don’t go near it. In the evenings I don’t doomscroll either. I just really don’t like my mobile. You see people staring at their phones constantly but I try to stay away. They really are a drug.

So the only ads I really see are outdoor ones, when I’m commuting.

I see a lot of outdoor on the branch line, on GWR and on the Elizabeth line. I find myself critiquing the ads — questioning why they’re using that message for that audience. And on the busy line from Paddington to Farringdon I see plenty.

Sometimes I see outdoor and I wonder why the message is too long, or the branding too small, or who they’re really targeting. I just love the range of what you can do with it. Outdoor can drive short-term ROI — like six-sheets close to the point of purchase — or long-term brand building with beautifully designed, large-format experiential sites that make you think differently about a brand.

So I’ve always loved outdoor. I’m heavily into art — I used to draw in my spare time before the kids came along — so I’ve always appreciated the creativity. I especially love The Economist’s classic outdoor campaigns. I’ve got coffee table books of outdoor advertising at home — ‘Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads’ and ‘Well-written and Red: The Story of the Economist Poster’ – both by Alfredo Marcantonio, and others. I love the simplicity of it: you’ve only got a few seconds, so the message has to be really creative.

OOH Case Notes: How PepsiCo Owned Football’s Biggest Moments

When it comes to football, PepsiCo knows that the battle for attention is every bit as fierce off the pitch as it is on it. Whether it’s with Pepsi MAX or Walkers crisps, the brand has consistently turned to out of home — harnessing its scale, immediacy and cultural presence to capture fans in the heat of their rituals.

The 2024 UEFA Champions League Final at Wembley was more than just a sporting event – it was a cultural moment. Pepsi MAX set out to ensure it was not only present but unmissable.

Planning started a year in advance to secure the most coveted OOH sites around Wembley, including a full station domination at Wembley Park. The city became drenched in Pepsi MAX blue.

But the ambition extended further. A vast OOH laydown spanned roadside sites, the Underground, and premium digital formats across London. Meanwhile “Hidden Pitches” activations in London, Manchester, and Liverpool saw influencers and fans alike capture the spirit of grassroots football.

The results underscored OOH’s unique power: more than 255 million impacts, overshow value of nearly £45,000, and over 72 million earned media impressions from coverage in outlets like Hypebeast, FourFourTwo and Sports Bible. Social amplification added another layer, turning activations into content and conversation. As Ed Sanderson explains, by booking early and collaborating seamlessly across agencies, Pepsi MAX transformed London into its own stadium and claimed cultural ownership of the tournament.

And if Pepsi MAX owned the drinks occasion, Walkers was determined to dominate the snack aisle. The challenge was clear: during major tournaments like the 2024 Euros and Champions League, fans face a wall of choice. Walkers needed to cut through the clutter and root itself in the rituals that make football sacred.

The insight was simple but powerful: football isn’t just a sport in Britain, it’s a cultural language of lucky socks, unwashed shirts, and match-day superstitions. And alongside every chant, every nervy penalty shoot-out, sits a pint and a pack of Walkers. The job was to celebrate that truth and make it visible everywhere fans gathered.

That meant smart, strategic OOH planning. Proximity planning ensured Walkers was present in fan zones, pubs, and viewing parties — embedding the brand in the lived rituals of football culture.

And then came the showstopper: a bold takeover of Piccadilly Circus, where VCCP’s DeepScreen creative starring David Beckham lit up the iconic lights. Just across the street, a pop-up brand space brought the campaign to life, offering fans photo moments and turning London’s busiest landmark into a playful celebration of football and crisps.

Walkers also knew that the pub is the heartland of football fandom. During the Euros, the brand teamed up with Stonegate Pubs to become part of every roar, groan, and last-minute goal replay.

Together, Pepsi MAX and Walkers show how PepsiCo approaches OOH not as an advertising channel, but as a cultural canvas. By aligning creative ambition with media strategy, the brands turned everyday spaces — from Tube stations to pub gardens — into theatres of fandom.