Soft drinks have been around for over a hundred years. Over
that time they have gone from a surgery drink to a pop culture phenomenon that
will never go away. The two brands that have been battling over the years are
Coke and Pepsi. While deciding which cola taste better is purely objective,
their numbers and successful campaigns are not. Pepsi and Coke have a long
history in persuasive campaigns trying to get people to drink their soda over
their competitors. Now we are not talking about the different products the companies
own outside of soda like chips or cereal; this is all about the soft drinks.
Over the years they have been trying to entice consumers
that their soda is better and offering prizes if people drink their brand of cola.
An easy way to determine if one soda was better than the other however would be
to simply try them both wouldn’t it? That is exactly what Pepsi thought in
1975. The most famous persuasive campaign of the cola wars was the Pepsi
Challenge. It was simple enough; Pepsi representatives set up tables at malls
or shopping centers and offered cups of both coke and Pepsi and had shoppers
try them to see which tasted better. Pepsi won by a land slide and their new ad
campaign sent sales through the roof. This had large effect on the Coca-Cola Company
because they then changed their recipe to their drink which consumers hated,
thus driving up the sales of Pepsi even more.
However, over their years the persuasive campaigns have
changed. Now Pepsi is more music based, offering tickets to concerts in the
summer and sponsoring the half time show at the Super Bowl. People have also
started to become more health conscience and cola companies have taken noticed.
Diet drinks are popular with Coke even creating Coke Zero, a diet drink aimed
towards men, to help with their sales. Pepsi has started making Pepsi with real
sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.
To try and make their brand seem more friendly coke created the
#ShareACoke campaign, where their bottles are printed with names on the side
and you can share a bottle with the name of someone you care about on it. Pepsi
saw a weakness with this campaign however and capitalized on it. People who are
angered by their names not featured on the coke cans could enter for a chance
to win concert tickets from Pepsi.
In the past it was more of a head to head battle for the top
spot. The cola companies would talk about why they are better than their competitor.
Now the campaigns have changed; it’s more of the companies talking about why
they are great instead of talking about why they are better. Soda will be
around for a long time and these two companies will always their trying to
entice people to drink their brand.
Papachristos, Anna. "Pepsi vs. Coke: Which Brand Had
the Most Successful Summer Campaign?" 1to1 Media. N.p., 15 Aug.
2015. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.
The third blog was supposed to name the specific campaign which will become the subject of your analysis. NO MORE COMPARISONS please.
ReplyDeleteThat said, both of these soft drink companies have been around a long time - and so I would suggest that you avoid trying to do a complete historical perspective. Whichever you select, I would suggest you take a look at the most recently adapted commercial campaign, and perhaps also some about the decision-making process to transition away from the preceding campaign. Please let me know how I can help.