A Study of The Corporate War Between Coca-cola and Pepsi

Pepsi and Coca Cola have been at war since Pepsi’s inception centuries ago. 13 years after Coca Cola was created, it’s main competitor Pepsi formed a company and brand of their own. Coca Cola was by far the more successful brand with expansion out of the United States and into Europe and surrounding areas, while Pepsi struggled to stay out of bankruptcy. Pepsi and Coca Cola essentially have the exact product; non-alcoholic soft drink cola. Each brand has adopted their own “version” of each type/flavor of soft drink, each with a very distinct but similar flavor.

Pepsi products typically have a more citrus-like sweeter flavor soft drinks, compared to Cola products that typically have a more vanilla basic flavor. Both cola products come in a can packaged with the word cola somewhere on it, respectfully with Coca or Pepsi on them. Pepsi cola is typically written and displayed in a blue can and writing. Coca cola is displayed with a red can and red writing. Coca Cola is a MUCH higher value brand, thanks to their many acquisitions of smaller companies, leading to a huge umbrella of brands, all under the Coca cola brand. Pepsi has acquired a few brands, but not anywhere near the extent that Coca Cola has.

The two commercials being compared will be the Pepsi cola and the Coca Cola commercials of the 2015 Super Bowl. The Pepsi cola commercial displayed many objects being transported through the air into a gigantic spaceship. The spaceship is later shown to be the Super Bowl football stadium with a massive Pepsi logo in the center all lit up. The idea behind it is that everything and everyone is attracted to Pepsi and if you want to be at the Super Bowl, you should drink Pepsi products. Pepsi is displayed as the face behind the most talked about sporting event of the year, and therefore the viewer wants to be popular like the Pepsi brand. Everybody is talking about the Super Bowl, and if Super Bowl = Pepsi, everyone wants to be like Pepsi. In comparison, the Coca Cola commercial has a general theme revolving around the hashtag #MakeItHappy. Coca Cola’s commercial has a very uplifting message further solidified at the end with the message “The world is what we make it.” Take special notice to the word “we” because the Coca Cola brand constantly has a very happy and family oriented message. Coca Cola begins with random seconds of people drinking Coca Cola, then proceeds to a laptop screen with a YouTube about a violent fight with the title “News interview gets violent”, which after a second, is splashed with Coca Cola and replaced with the title “News interview gets happy”. The next slide is of a woman sadly waiting for transportation next to a screen with a far-away time, which is splashed with Coca Cola and is changed to the meme of the baby with a fist that says “WE GOT THIS”, making the woman smile with the faith restored in her that she can wait for her ride. The next sequence shows a young boy seeing on post on Facebook to him saying “No one likes U” and the boy obviously being upset by it. The screen is fizzled out by Coca Cola and changes the message to red text (iconic of Coca Cola), and it now says “There’s no one like U #MakeItHappy”, making the boy much happier. The final sequence shows the message “The world is what we make it” with the background a very uplifting color. And as always, it ends with a Coca Cola bottle spinning.

Research has shown that viewers respond much better to a healthier and happier message much like the one perpetuated by Coca Cola in their #MakeItHappy campaign. Coca Cola also has a much more well-known brand easily known outside the United States compared to Pepsi which is generally a United States based brand.