At first glance, you might think that this is an advertisement for Coke, however, it turns out to be Pepsi’s advert with a slight jab at its life-long rival. One of the biggest marketing rivalries of all time- Coke vs Pepsi.
Some history about this rivalry:
Coke was first founded, then followed by Pepsi 13 years later with the two having almost similar ingredients. In the earlier days, Coke had a significant head start over Pepsi and was selling millions of gallons when Pepsi just started. Pepsi went bankrupt during WWI while Coke expanded overseas and everybody is just starting to recognize its iconic brand. After that, Pepsi rebounded an started advertising heavily and expanded into the snack market as well with Frito Lay while Coca-Cola remained in the beverage industry. Competition became stiff.
Then came the blind taste test in 1975 by Pepsi where consumers were blind-folded and asked to taste both Coke and Pepsi and see which one they preferred. Pepsi won the blind taste test because people noted that it was ‘sweeter’.
However, Coke was still the hot favorite among consumers in the following years and even up till now, with Coca-Cola being on the most recognized and iconic brands of the world with PepsiCo barely making it into the top 20 (depending on which ranking you’re looking at, but no matter what, Coca-Cola always triumphs!)
Also, I personally feel that the ultimate winner of the Cola Wars goes to Coke. (-:
“When Read Montague of Baylor College Medicine performed a version of the Pepsi Challenge with subjects hooked up to an fMRI machine, he found something interesting. In blind taste tests, most people preferred Pepsi, and Pepsi was associated with a higher level of activity in an area of the brain known as the ventral putamen, which helps us evaluate different flavors. By contrast, in a nonblind test, Coke was more popular and was also associated with increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Montague’s interpretation: This prefrontal activity represented the higher-thinking functions of the brain associating the soda with ad campaigns and, in effect, overriding the taste buds.” (Source)
These findings are groundbreaking and it says a lot about the influence marketing and media has on the success of a product. Even though Pepsi might taste better because it’s “sweeter” and some people do like their drinks to be sweeter, a quote I came across sums this up pretty well: “And while we want something sweet, we don’t necessarily want that kind of long-term relationship with something too sweet.” Instead, Coca-Cola is more invested in building lifelong customer relationships than PepsiCo is and I think this marketing strategy is WAY more effective. This goes to show that a good product itself is not good enough in today’s society. (-:
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