Coke or Pepsi? The eternal debate. I was reminded of this age-old question when I stumbled on the blog of one of my classmates, Lana Lauriente(https://blogs.ubc.ca/lanalauriente/). She says that Pepsi does a better job of targeting the younger demographic, which is especially evident with their slogan “taste the one that’s forever young” and the fact that they use younger celebrities to market their product. However, I was thinking that Pepsi has made some poor decisions regarding who they chose to market their products.
Pepsi has used celebrities such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Mariah Carey in recent years as spokespersons. Coincidentally, all had some tabloid scandals in recent years, resulting in ”trashy” images for all 3 of them. I doubt this is the way Pepsi envisioned things would turn out for them. In August of 2002, Pepsi pulled a national, 30-second commercial featuring multiplatinum rapper Ludacris from the air after reporter Bill O’Reilly called for a boycott of the soft drink company. O’Reilly characterized Pepsi as “immoral” for using the rapper, whom he described as a “rap thug.” O’Reilly referenced several of Ludacris’s lyrics, which he said emphasized a lifestyle that included getting intoxicated, selling drugs, fighting people, and degrading women.
Rap and fashion mogul Russell Simmons also objected to the idea of Pepsi running ads featuring the Osbournes, whom he called ”racially insensitive”. And let’s not all forget the backlash from Pepsi endorser Kanye West’s “George Bush does not care about black people” comment.
Although Pepsi is still in the race for cola supremacy, it seems that may be they would be in the King’s Chair instead of Coca-Cola if they had made some better choices when choosing spokespersons since a key aspect of marketing is portraying a respectable image to the public.