Posts tagged ‘Coke vs. Pepsi’

March 16th, 2009

Who Does a Better Job with Their Marketing: Coke or Pepsi?

The Cola Wars have only just begun. Last week, we put a new poll on our website asking readers to vote on who does a better job with their marketing, Coke or Pepsi. We’ve had a large number of responses and, as of this posting, the results are exactly 50/50.coke-logo

If you’d like to share your point-of-view with us, just visit the 60 Second Marketer home page and place your vote.

Paul Van Winkle, who is Strategic Business Development and Chief Marketing Officer at AI Digital | Artemis Creative, made a very insightful comment about the poll on our LinkedIn 60 Second Forum. Here’s what Paul had to say:

“Let’s define “marketing” — if by marketing you mean “advertising”, “promotion” and “brand management”, I’ll say from a consumer perspective, Pepsi is almost always the polled winner by producing branded advertising that’s more interesting and fun to watch. The spunk of Pepsi’s efforts are more directly linked to it’s sweet-fizzy-caffeinated-upbeat brand appeal.

But if “marketing” is more broadly and interconnectedly defined to incorporate business and sales acumen, pricing, community and vendor resource relationships, global positioning, product lifecycle — and growth/shareholder value, etc — it would appear Coke is still the leader, and therefore “better”.

And isn’t this what ‘marketing’ is really for — and about? Achieving business results and sales objectives with defined applications of strategy, communications, finances, innovations and relationships?

Pass me an unbranded beer, the Final Four are on….”

Well said, Paul!

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September 8th, 2008

Coke vs. Pepsi: What Pepsi Got Right

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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