Coke vs. Pepsi: What Pepsi Got Right

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It’s crossed my mind that there are two articles on The 60 Second Marketer that discuss the Coke vs. Pepsi cola wars. One of them recounts a study done at Baylor University that used brain-scans to analyze the findings of a taste test. The other talks about the brand essences of Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi.

You might read these two articles and think that I’m a bit biased towards Coke, but that’s not actually the case. (If anything, I usually root for the underdog, which is why I’m an Apple computer fan.)

Anyway, there are a lot of incredible things Pepsi has accomplished over the past several decades. They spotted the bottled water trend before The Coca-Cola Company did. They were the first to jump on the consumer shift to non-carbonated beverages. And they’ve done a fabulous job with some of their core brands like Gatorade and Mountain Dew.

There’s a lot to be said for the folks at Pepsi — including the fact that they have Indra Nooyi as their CEO, proving that the gang in New York is a forward-thinking bunch. (For the record, I can recall 7 or 8 top people at The Coca-Cola Company from the past two decades and 100% of them are white males.)

Anyway, the cola wars continue in part because Pepsi keeps The Coca-Cola Company on its toes. And that’s definitely something worth acknowledging.

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Time Monday, September 8th, 2008, 5:11 pm   |   CategoryGeneral Marketing  |  RssRSS feed |  CommentRespond  |  TrackbackTrackback

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  • http://all-notions.com/blog/?p=183 Billy

    I found this to be an interesting cola wars post. Pepsi does keep Coca-Cola growing, they see that Pepsi has a new product they have to try to come up with a new one as well to stay competitive. So in a way they’re motivation for each other to continue advancing.

    I made a post about this on my site, link is in my name if you would like to read it.

  • http://www.60SecondMarketer.com admin

    Thanks for your thoughts, Billy. I’ve come to believe that Apple keeps Microsoft on its toes, too, in the same way you point out that Pepsi keeps Coke on its toes.

    Competition good. Monopoly bad. Which, of course, raises a new question, “What do we do about Google?”

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