Cola wars: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 16:51, 12 January 2010
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2008) |
The Cola Wars were a campaign of mutually-targeted television advertisements and marketing campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s between soft drink manufacturers The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo.
Competition
Pepsi and Coca-Cola had/have different brands of soda and other drinks competing with each other's company:
| Type | PepsiCo | The Coca-Cola Company |
|---|---|---|
| Dark Cola | Pepsi | Coca-Cola |
| Diet / Low calorie | Diet Pepsi / Pepsi Light Pepsi ONE Pepsi Max |
Diet Coke / Coca-Cola Light Tab Coca-Cola Zero |
| Low Carb | Pepsi Edge (discontinued) | Coca-Cola C2 (discontinued in USA) |
| Clear Cola | Crystal Pepsi (discontinued) | Tab Clear (discontinued) |
| Lemon Lime Soda | Sierra Mist | Sprite |
| Cherry Soda | Pepsi Wild Cherry | Coca-Cola Cherry |
| Orange Soda | Tropicana Twister Slice Mirinda Sunkist Kas Crush (South America) Yedigün (Turkey) |
Fanta Minute Maid Royal Tru Orange (Philippines) |
| Juices | Tropicana
Dole (refrigerated and cans only) |
Minute Maid |
| Iced Tea | Lipton (ready-to-drink products only) (manufactured by Unilever) |
Nestea (manufactured by Nestle in the USA and by Beverage Partners Worldwide (BPW), a joint venture between Nestle and Coca-Cola elsewhere) |
| Water | Aquafina | Dasani Bonaqua Kinley Ciel Eva Viva! (Philippines) Turkuaz, Damla (Turkey) Chaudfontaine (Belgium), Mount Franklin (Australia), Pump (Australia), Kropla Beskidu (Poland), Vital (Chile) |
| Root Beer | Mug Root Beer | Barq's Sarsi (Philippines) |Fanta Root Beer |
| Sports Drink | Gatorade Propel |
Powerade Aquarius Relentless |
| Citrus Soda | Teem Mountain Dew Mountain Dew MDX Kas |
Mello Yello Vault Fresca Surge (discontinued) Rondo (discontinued) Lift Sparkle (Philippines) |
| Vanilla-Flavored | Pepsi Vanilla (discontinued) | Coca-Cola Vanilla |
| Lime-Flavored | Pepsi Lime (discontinued) | Coca-Cola with Lime (discontinued) Diet Coke with Lime |
| Lemon-Flavored | Pepsi Twist (discontinued) | Coca-Cola with Lemon (discontinued) |
| Hip-Hop Themed | Pepsi Presents Biz Markie's Refreshing Beats | Dr Dre's The Cola 2001 (by Coke) |
Marketing campaigns
![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
Coca-Cola and Pepsi focused particularly on rock stars; notable soft drink promoters included Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Ray Charles (for Pepsi) and Paula Abdul, Weird Al Yankovic, George Michael, and Elton John (for Diet Coke).
Coca-Cola
| This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
One example of a heated exchange that occurred during the Cola Wars was Coca-Cola making a strategic retreat on July 11, 1985, by announcing its plans to bring back the original 'Classic' Coke after recently introducing New Coke.
Pepsi
Pepsi ads often focused on celebrities, choosing Pepsi over Coke, supporting Pepsi's positioning as "The Choice of a New Generation." In 1975, Pepsi began showing people doing blind taste tests called Pepsi Challenge in which they preferred one product over the other, and then they began hiring more and more popular spokespersons to promote their products.
In the late 1990s, Pepsi launched its most successful long-term strategy of the Cola Wars, Pepsi Stuff. Consumers were invited to "Drink Pepsi, Get Stuff" and collect Pepsi Points on billions of packages and cups. They could redeem the points for free Pepsi lifestyle merchandise. After researching and testing the program for over two years to ensure that it resonated with consumers, Pepsi launched Pepsi Stuff, which was an instant success. Tens of millions of consumers participated. Pepsi outperformed Coke during the summer of the Atlanta Olympics - held in Coke's hometown - where Coke was a lead sponsor of the Games. Due to its success, the program was expanded to include Mountain Dew, and into Pepsi's international markets worldwide. The company continued to run the program for many years, continually innovating with new features each year.[1]
The Pepsi Stuff promotion became the subject of a lawsuit. In one of the many commercials, Pepsi showed a young man in the cockpit of a Harrier Jump Jet. Below ran the caption "Harrier Jet: 7 million Pepsi Points." There was a mechanism for buying additional Pepsi Points to complete a Pepsi Stuff order. John Leonard, of Seattle, Washington, sent in a Pepsi Stuff request with the maximum amount of points and a check for over $700,000US to make up for the extra points he needed. Pepsi did not accept the request and Leonard filed suit. The judgment was that a reasonable person viewing the commercial would realize that Pepsi was not, in fact, offering a Harrier Jet. In response to the suit, Pepsi added the words "Just Kidding" under the portion of the commercial featuring the jet as well as changing the "price" to 700 million Pepsi points (see Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.).
Coca-Cola and Pepsi engaged in a "cyber-war" with the re-introduction of Pepsi Stuff in 2005 & Coca-Cola retaliated with Coke Rewards. This cola war has now concluded, with Pepsi Stuff ending its services and Coke Rewards offering lackluster prizes on their website. Both were loyalty programs that give away prizes and product to consumers after collecting bottle caps and 12 or 24 pack box tops, then submitting codes online for a certain number of points. However, Pepsi's online partnership with Amazon allowed consumers to buy various products with their "Pepsi Points", such as mp3 downloads. Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi previously had a partnership with the iTunes Store.
In space
In 1985, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on STS-51-F. The companies had designed special cans (officially the Carbonated Beverage Dispenser Evaluation payload or CBDE) to test packaging and dispensing techniques for use in zero G conditions. The experiment was classified a failure by the shuttle crew, primarily due to the lack of both refrigeration and gravity.[citation needed] A Coca-Cola fountain dispenser (officially a Fluids Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus-2 or FGBA-2) was developed for use on the Space Shuttle Endeavour as a "a test bed to determine if carbonated beverages can be produced from separately stored carbon dioxide, water and flavored syrups and determine if the resulting fluids can be made available for consumption without bubble nucleation and resulting foam formation". The unit flew in 1996 aboard STS-77 and held 1.65 liters each of Coca-Cola and Diet Coke.[2]
Second Cola War
During the 1990s, a "second cola war" was reported in the United Kingdom. This time it was due to the launch of Virgin Cola, as well as Sainsbury's store brand Classic Cola, which, unlike most store brand colas, was designed to look like a top product worthy of competition. For a few years both colas were competitive with Coca-Cola and Pepsi; at one point Coca-Cola even sued Sainsbury's claiming the design of the Classic Cola can was too similar to Coke's. However, today, both Virgin and Classic Cola are far behind the two major brands. The high-publicity marketing also continued into the 1990s. In 1997 the Spice Girls (then at their peak) signed a multi-million pound sponsorship deal with Pepsi. They starred in three Pepsi commercials, released two limited edition singles with Pepsi; "Move Over" and "Step To Me", featured on Pepsi packaging and performed two live concerts in Istanbul organised and sponsored by the company.
"Cola Wars" in Popular Culture
- A satirical look at the cola war can be found in the 1985 film The Coca-Cola Kid, starring Eric Roberts.
- Rock musician Billy Joel mentions the "Cola Wars" in his number-one hit "We Didn't Start the Fire."
- South Park referenced the Cola Wars in the 2003 episode "It's Christmas in Canada", when one character stated that Canada was "devastated by the Cola Wars."[3]
- In the online game Kingdom of Loathing there is a reference to the Cola Wars in a side area that can be accessed if the player goes through a temporal rift in the Nearby Plains. This area contains a literal Cola War between the Dyspepsi-Cola and Cloaca-Cola armies.
- In the Red Dwarf novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, the origins of Kryten's original ship, the Nova 5, are given as the ship being involved in an advertising campaign for Coke.
- Punk Cabaret band The Dresden Dolls makes mention of the Cola Wars in the song "Modern Moonlight," on their album Yes, Virginia...: "Coke and Pepsi finally found a compromise...."
- Melbourne punk band named Cola Wars formed in 2006.
- In 1997, the satirical newspaper The Onion wrote of a "memorial" for the jobs lost to the Cola Wars. [4]
See also
References
Notes
- ^ http://promomagazine.com/currentissue/marketing_pop_go_points/ PROMO Magazine
- ^ [www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/shuttle_pk/pk/Flight_077_STS-077_Press_Kit.pdf "STS-77 Press Kit"] (PDF). National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved 2009-06-13.
{{cite web}}: Check|url=value (help) - ^ [1]
- ^ http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29808