#Coke vs pepsi ad wars full
#Coke vs pepsi ad wars series

Cheaper printing meant everything was in color, and ads everywhere now exploded in the use of full-page, full-color, full-bleed images.Ībove: Meanwhile, 7-Up was floundering, with some seriously flawed soft drink advertising.

#Coke vs pepsi ad wars full

The second change was the growth of full color in print publications. Coke took advantage of this trend by moving rapidly into roadside vending machines and soda shops, positioning itself as the refreshment for people who loved to drive. While the ad is unfocused, it does a good job of communicating the portability of the six-pack.įive years later, soft drink brands were putting their emphasis on group dynamics, showing people getting together in social settings with the product as the “life of the party,” so to speak.Ībove: In 1951, with American society buoyed by the post-war boom, two significant cultural changes seemed to impact the Cola Wars.Īutomobile travel became vital to American culture.

Notice how the ad on the left touches on multiple themes, from convenience to taste and quality, rather than staying on one message. Today, we can’t imagine Santa looking any other way.Ībove: In 1941, advertising began to focus on product benefits, but it was still pretty unsophisticated. Perhaps it was the consistency of how Coke continued to portray Santa year after year that caused this style treatment of the Santa image to be so well established around the world.

The timing was right for Coke, as it tied in with the new explosion of commercialism. Sundblom’s images were so successful his work was used for the next 33 years.

#Coke vs pepsi ad wars series

In 1931, a series of illustrations were created for the D’Arcy ad agency by Haddon Sundblom, who was inspired by the famous poem The Night Before Christmas. The look of Santa Claus that we’ve grown so familiar with began as Coca Cola ads in the Saturday Evening Post back in 1930. The company set out to change that image through advertising. We also see the beginning of the red circle, and the tagline “the pause that refreshes” used in the headline.Ībove: Until the late 1920’s, Coke was only thought of as a warm-weather beverage. By tying into the history of the brand, it was the first move towards its positioning as the “real thing,” though that tagline would come some 10 years later. In the ad from 1936 on the right, we see a reference to how long Coke has been around, probably in response to market pressure from Pepsi and other brands. Was this omission deliberate? Or did they just not think the shape of the bottle was relevant in advertising? We don’t see the famously shaped bottle, which was designed in 1915 in the shape of a woman’s curves. I thought it would be fun to take a visual journey through the historic advertising of some of these soft drink giants to see what we might learn about the strategies, cultural shifts, and ourselves.Ībove: Coke had already been in business for decades when the ad on the left above appeared in 1920. Yoffie.We’ve all felt the impact of the cola wars, from Coke’s introduction of the now iconic image of Santa Claus through 7-Up’s UnCola strategy and the ongoing battle between Coke and Pepsi. A rewritten version of an earlier case by Michael E. The case considers whether Coke's and Pepsi's era of sustained growth and profitability was coming to a close or whether this apparent slowdown was just another blip in the course of a century of enviable performance. CSD consumption dropped for two consecutive years and worldwide shipments slowed for both Coke and Pepsi.

This cozy situation was threatened in the late 1990s, however, when U.S. and worldwide CSD consumption consistently rose. In a 'carefully waged competitive struggle,' from 1975 to 1995 both Coke and Pepsi had achieved average annual growth of around 10% as both U.S. The most intense battles of the cola wars were fought over the $60 billion industry in the United States, where the average American consumes 53 gallons of carbonated soft drinks (CSD) per year. For over a century, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola had vied for the 'throat share' of the world's beverage market. They looked to emerging international markets to fuel growth and broaden their brand portfolios to include noncarbonated beverages like tea, juice, sports drinks, and bottled water. Both firms also began to modify their bottling, pricing, and brand strategies. New challenges of the 21st century included boosting flagging domestic cola sales and finding new revenue streams. Examines the industry structure and competitive strategy of Coca-cola and Pepsi over 100 years of rivalry.