 | ||
The cola wars are a series of mutually-targeted television advertisements and marketing campaigns since the 1980s between soft drink producers, and long time rivals, The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. The battle between the two dominant brands intensified to such an extent that the term “Cola wars” was used to describe the feud. Each employed numerous advertising and marketing campaigns to outdo the other.
Contents
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola advertising has historically focused on wholesomeness and nostalgia for childhood. Coca-Cola advertising is often characterized as "family-friendly" and often relies on "cute" characters (e.g., the Coca-Cola polar bear mascot and Santa Claus around Christmas).
One example of a heated exchange that occurred during the Cola Wars was Coca-Cola's 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 Challenge
In 1975, Pepsi began showing people in blind taste tests called the Pepsi Challenge, in which they preferred one product over the other, and then they began hiring increasing numbers of popular spokespersons to promote their products.
Drink Pepsi, Get Stuff
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 1996 Summer 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 Pepsi's international markets worldwide. The company continued to run the program for many years, continually innovating with new features each year.
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 $700,000 USD 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 changed the "price" to 700 billion Pepsi points (see Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.).
Cyberwar
Coca-Cola and Pepsi engaged in a "cyberwar" 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 still offering prizes on their website. Both were loyalty programs that give away prizes and product to consumers who, after collecting bottle caps and 12- or 24-pack box tops, then submitted 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.
The "Coca-Cola Space Dispenser" (Fluids Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus-1, or FGBA-1) was designed to provide astronauts the opportunity to enjoy Coca-Cola and Diet Coke in the weightless environment of space, and to "provide baseline data on changes in astronauts' taste perception of beverages consumed in microgravity." It held 1.65 liters each of Coca-Cola and Diet Coke. An astronaut would dispense the carbonated drink of choice into a "Fluids Transfer Unit" or sealed drinking cup through a quick connect on the dispenser. To save power, the dispenser would chill the liquid on demand via cooling coils between the storage container and the quick connect fitting. The FGBA-1 and 18 of the "Fluid Transfer Units" flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1995. (STS-63)
Further development led to a Coca-Cola fountain dispenser (Fluids Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus-2 or FGBA-2) intended as "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". This unit dispensed Powerade sports drink in addition to Coca-Cola and Diet Coke, and it flew on STS-77 aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1996. However, the FGBA-2 did not work as expected.
Comparison of products
Many of the brands available from the three largest soda producers, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, are intended as direct, equivalent competitors. The following chart lists these competitors by type or flavor of drink.