Alright, who is the predominant in the social media world? (Coca-Cola vs Pepsi)

We’ve posted a detailed information about the strategy of Pepsi to attract youth people and social media activities for this target. There is a current research about social media effectiveness of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. In despite of market share and selling rates, Pepsi has an hegemony on social media attraction especially with Pepsi's new strategy which has been implemented since 2008. Indeed, "Coca-Cola has by far the higher number of Facebook likes, 51 million to Pepsi's 9 million. But if you look at other numbers, the situation is different and, if anything, Pepsi might be winning in the social media world."

That research by exact numbers:

Logo evaluation: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi

If you compare the logo evolution of Coca-Cola and Pepsi cola, you may find there was a big different in the strategy of two companies. Today, you may find the Coca-Cola logo of is amazingly similar to the logo they used 130 years ago when the first time it being introduced, and it is the same as it was in 1900s.

However, we can see there was a panty of changes in the logo of PepsiCo. They began to use blue color in its logo after 1950s.  And they even try to not include the company name “Pepsi” in the logo in recent year. It is not a surprise because Pepsi continuously focus on radical change and periodic reinvention.

It is important to realize here, Coca-Cola is relying on the tradition and loyalty of the company and its customers. So that it creates consistency and history necessity, while Pepsi has a rich tradition of keeping pace with the changing customers needs and providing new and trendy soft drinks.

Customer Insight of Coca-Cola

As a marketing analyst might say, even a big company, such as Coca-Cola, needs to differentiate its products. Coca launched “Coca light”, and successively introduced “Coca zero” to soft drink market. They are coming for woman and man respectively, as Coca light seems to be more diet with lower carbon tax, and Coca zero sounds cool and extreme simultaneously. However, according to its own marketing survey, the original favor is still the best hit.

Pepsi, the second share owner of soft drink market, knows that the golden rule to follow customers, that is, it started the Pepsi Refresh program to focus on the young group, which boosted to be one of the most potential customers in this market. Then, let’s change the slide to Coca Cola, how could it maintain the top place?! Coca Cola knows well about customers for sure. The image of Coca Cola is cool, and just good to drink. The advertisements are always catchy and creative, like the animation one with the polar bear and his friends drinking Coca Cola and dancing. And another, a king of a trial somewhere faraway, and he gave Coca Cola a try, and then he went excited and surprised to make some funny moves. They keep conveying the spirit of cool, nothing but cool.

Nobody would refuse to be one of the cool. So, they don’t need so-called customized products. They are willing to pay for a red-and-black drink, just for a cool shot inside and a cool style outside. 

Customer Insight of Pepsi in spite of Coca-Cola

If you compare Pepsi with Coca-Cola in terms of reaching exact customer, it’s not a false observation that Coca-Cola beats Pepsi. Sales rates and market shares also endorse this observation. PepsiCo, the 2nd biggest soft drink company on the world, have began to create a new strategy in 2008 that the strategy is to attempt to reach youth market. Jill Beraud, who is Pepsi CMO, says in an interview that “Pepsi has, and always will, embody and fuel the spirit and optimism of youth”. For this aim, they have implemented a project named as Pepsi Refresh with a new Pepsi logo. In this project, the brand image has improved by social media connections and they have begun to get involved youth events as a sponsorship. The project website was refresheverything.com. You can check the website to see how they can manage youth events and strategies for youth people on their website. That website is now the official website of Pepsi. It means that the strategy is related with whole brand.

Product Touch Point and Differentiation

Widely-recognized, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are the two most popular beverage brands in the world. Within the lineup of beverages, their well-known predominant beverages are Pepsi-Cola and Cola Classic, the carbonated cola. Over the century, Coke and Pepsi have been at each other's throats in a constant strive for a bigger piece of the billion-dollar soda market. Although when compared in double blind taste tests, the majority of people could not tell the difference in taste, people will swear they love one or the other.

According to Interbrand's annual report, Coca-Cola is a more valuable brand than Pepsi. The reason is because brand image of Coca Cola is more deeply-rooted than Pepsi's. Both drinks are no longer seen as a beverage but primarily as a brand. Both companies oblige greatly to sponsoring outdoor music festivals and are even charitable

By appealing to pop culture, Pepsi tries to target on the younger generation. Their website is consisted flashy pages containing pop music, cars, and fashion. Even though, Coca-Cola's website also has links for music and sports, two arenas in which soda-pop is often consumed; but due to its long history as the standard for cola beverages, Coca-Cola's is less flashy and uses a classical appeal.

While Pepsi had Britney Spears, Keshauntae Brown, Michael Jackson, and Mariah Carey, Coca-Cola had Christina Aguilera featured in their commercials. Furthermore, while Pepsi with its younger audience tends to focus only on pop stars, it was Coca-Cola who is regarded as having one of the greatest TV advertisements of all time, featuring a far more mature pop band Blondie and the enormous hit "Atomic", the video played the main chorus of the song to the backdrop of professional footballers taking part in genuine competitive World Cup games and the noise a contender for the coveted title of Greatest Commercial of All Time in many nations.

Over the past several years, the brand at the top of the list of Interbrand's annual report has been Coca-Cola. That's not surprising, given the amount of effort and money the company put into creating their brand.

Surprisingly, spending just about as much money on branding as Coke and sell just about as much product. Pepsi comes in as the 26th most valuable brand in the world.

The important factors which indicated these circumstance is the difference of their brand's essence.

In other words, the brand essence for Coca-Cola has to do with things Americans hold close to their hearts, for example, people will think of America, Santa Clause, Polar Bears, World War II, History, and Family when they think of Coca Cola. Coca-Cola has a brand appeal that taps into some of the most deeply-ingrained emotions.

And for Pepsi, their brand essence isn't as deeply-rooted as Coca-Cola's. It's based on what's new, what's hot and what's trendy such as Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Youth, The Choice of a New Generation, Cool, and Fun.

This happened because several decades ago, Pepsi decided to focus on the youth market since adults' brand loyalty for Coca-Cola was too well-entrenched to change their preferences. The company would like to spend their time, money and energy appealing to a younger market who, eventually, would replace the more mature Coke drinkers.

The problem was that by focusing on youth, Coca-Cola still keeps the brand values it already had. And those brand values are things that are deeply rooted in the American being. On the contrary, Pepsi has won abundantly of battles and has been keeping The Coca-Cola Company on its toes for decades. What Pepsi did with Gatorade, Aquafina and the non-carbonated beverage category are some of the examples.

U.S. Consumption of carbonated soft drinks has steadily declined in the past decade.

Part of that comes down to the range of other beverages the market now offers. Part of it comes down to health concerns in a nation with an obesity problem.

As a result, in the past few years, Pepsi comes up with their new strategy which they are focus more on the health-concerned product such as water, juices, teas and sports drinks.

Pepsi’s brands in those areas consist of Aquafina and Gatorade. And while it traces in soft drink sales, it leads the world in ready-to-drink teas through Lipton, though its Tropicana succeed in juices nectars.

The company is betting huge on creating healthy foods over its Quaker Oats, Gatorade and Tropicana divisions. And it just initiated the Global Nutrition Group to bring breakthrough products.

And also, Pepsi try to hired several well-known nutritionists to direct its efforts at reducing fat, sodium and sugar in its products.

In the meantime, Coca-Cola doesn’t seem to concern about what Pepsi has established. The company not only remains to focus on selling soft drinks worldwide, but even undertakes to rebuild Coke sales in the U.S. market. And undoubtedly, there was only 2% fall in Coke’s beverage volume in North America the year before. In 2009, it was tremendously tough economically on top of a relatively cool summer. In contrast, Pepsi’s beverage volume in the same region decreased 8%. While both brands have been declining, Pepsi is doing so at a slightly quicker rate.

As far as Pepsi is concerned, the cola wars are over. It now desires to focus on convincing investors that it has the right concentrate in this new strategy.

At present, the Global Nutrition Group is little but a nice marketing tool. It recently reduced the top end of its guidance for earnings growth. This may be because of increased investment in nutrition or due to a challenging, competitive global environment. Coke, among others, continues to giveaway market share from Pepsi. However, Pepsi had not neglected the company’s core business. Carbonated beverages still produce greatly of the company’s sales and for now, they’re still key to Pepsi’s upcoming health.

source: http://www.cnntees.com/infographics/coke-vs-pepsi/

http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Coca-Cola_vs_Pepsi

http://www.60secondmarketer.com/60SecondArticles/Branding/index.html

http://designshack.net/articles/graphics/pepsi-vs-coke-the-power-of-a-brand
http://packagingcity.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/coke-vs-pepsi.jpg

COCA COLA VS PEPSI

Coca Cola has been fighting against their main compeitor for many years. Pepsi was created in 1893. They have been competitors for more than 100 years.

When Pepsi got into this soft drinks markets, all their benefits where awfull because they bankrupt twice. After this occured the businnes started to be run by a Coca Cola distributor who finally sood up the other company.

Pepsi, as everyone knows , started with a very agressive actitude by increasing more quantity of the product and by reducing the price,compared with the coca cola one’s; The result was the sales increase.

In the other hand Coca Cola power dominated in EE.UU. Pepsi finally gained the same position as Coca Cola had. Changing their positioning was the key factor. They unificated the flavour and they started an agressive publicity strategy.

Pepsi marketing strategy was based on making differentiation between both brands trying to get closer to the young people section by identifying the brand Coca Cola with the traditional parents drink. This approach had a tremendous exit.

Now a days Coca Cola and Pepsi offer similar products, they attack mostly to one market section and they also want to get to the same range of people all around the world.

The Coca Cola Company succeded since the beginning because they used appropiate strategies as we said before. The brand development strategy of Coca Cola has been definied for a long term.

Loyalty of the brand is a very important factor to maintain their number one position. This loyalty was gained thanks to the useful and eficient strategies used by the members of the boards such as penetration strategy of the market, as the years passed Coca Cola provided many countries their products for example to South America, Asia, Africa…nearly all the world. Indeed, Coca Cola always conservate their main product as well as introducing new products but they have changed many times their packaging, drink tastes but they have never changed the logo since 1940, contrary Pepsi changed their logal frequently.

"Happiness" - customer insight of which brand?

Many brands have been using the word "Happiness" to reach consumers as a insight strategy. However, one of them has strong relationship with this basic word. All people who have drunk a coke even one time know that customer insight of Coca Cola is happiness. There is a great example of this insight to create a marketing method.