Pepsi vs. Coca Cola – Never-ending war!

Coca Cola, the most famous luscious drink in the world, recently celebrated its 125th birthday. But the main rival, Pepsi, still claims that they are better then Coca Cola in every aspect. It is needless to say that these two companies have written thousands of pages of marketing strategies.

World War II was perhaps the most devastating and tragic conflict in history. The U.S. war in Vietnam was perhaps the stupidest conflict in history. But, there is no doubt that the war between Coca Cola and Pepsi is the most expensive one. However, some would characterize this conflict and as “the vainest”, because almost everyone knows that these two drinks are actually the same thing – regardless of the efforts that these two giants are doing to prove otherwise.

With parties all around the world, Coca Cola has recently celebrated 125 years of planet amusement.  And let me clear immediately the following misconception – they have not created Santa Claus, nor dressed him in red, but they did gave an invaluable contribution to his image and popularity. Their legendary logo hasn’t change throughout history, nor has their famous bottle.

Pepsi was created 12 years later, in 1898, when the enterprising Caleb Bradham mixed something in his garage, in New Bern, North Carolina.

The first advertisement for Pepsi was a poster with one of the first professional automobile race drivers, Barney Oldfield, who promoted the drink with: "A bully drink...refreshing, invigorating, a fine bracer before a race." Previously, Coca-Cola had already developed a marketing system, which included special coupons for the purchase of their drink, as well as huge commercials and murals on U.S. buildings. Some of them have been preserved to this day.

For decades, the “second drink” tried to reach the popularity and sales of Coca Cola, until a real earthquake that occurred in the forties. Pepsi’s president at that time, Walter Mack, realized that all ads for this two refreshing drinks promoted stereotypes against black people, or just ignored them completely. He realized that Pepsi could focus on the “negroes” – as the black Americans were called then - and devised a campaign in which African-Americans appeared in a more positive perspective.

However, racial segregation was still very strong throughout America, especially in the south. Pepsi’s marketing team suffered great discrimination, insults, and the members of Ku Klux Klan even threatened them with death. Pepsi tried to use this through the messages that told how Coca Cola is a racist company. Thanks to this, the sales of Pepsi in Chicago surpassed Coke for the first time. 

 However, the pressure on the company leaders, who did not want to lose white customers, was too strong. Walter Mack, who soon left the presidential chair, defended himself with the words: “We don't want it to become known as a nigger drink.”

In the seventies, when the West entered the consumer heyday, the escalation of conflict that burned low for decades occurred. Thanks to the U.S. laws that allowed even the most aggressive advertising, Pepsi and Coca Cola started bombing each other with all forces they got.  That is how, in 1975, came the famous Pepsi Challenge.

Pepsi Challenge was, in fact, just an ordinary tasting that was supposed to prove that Pepsi is better, and that the people’s opinions were generally shaped with advertising and image. In shopping malls throughout U.S., a representative of Pepsi would set-up a stand with two unmarked cups. In one cup was Pepsi and in the other Coca Cola. The people would try both and then decide which drink was better. The test results showed that people preferred the taste of Pepsi.

From the late seventies and onwards, both brands hired celebrities as promoters. Pepsi started with Michael Jackson and Madonna, and Coca Cola responded with Paula Abdul and George Michael.  Pepsi later hired David Beckham, and even Britney Spears, which caused a scandal when she was caught with a glass of Coke in her hand.

Before that, in 1985 and a decade later, both drinks found themselves on a Space-shuttle "Challenger". Pepsi’s last great success was in the mid-nineties, when they launched a campaign called Pepsi Stuff. With each purchased can or bottle of Pepsi, you would receive a certain number of points, and by collecting them, you were able to redeem them for some gift. The success of the campaign was so great that Pepsi was selling more than Coca Cola, especially during the summer in which the Olympic Games were held in the United States, in Atlanta, where the headquarters of Coca-Cola is located.

One of the biggest scandals in the history of Pepsi is related to this very campaign. Their commercial claimed that anyone who collects seven million points, would receive as a gift a military plane - Harrier Jump Jet. For $700,000, Seattle resident John Leonard bought just enough points and asked his reward from Pepsi. When the company refused to give him an aircraft worth $23 million, Leonard sued them, but he lost...

How things stand now? Latest information indicates that Pepsi lost its second place by Diet Coke. But, apparently, Pepsi is preparing a new, and more “dangerous” campaign…

Pepsi and Coca Cola over the decades

-    1972 – Pepsi conquers Soviet Union
-    1975 – Pepsi launches Pepsi Challenge
-    1977 – Pepsi bought Pizza Hut
-    1985 – in April, Coca Cola changes her recipe and introduces New Coke
-    1985 – in July, Coca Cola returns to the old recipe
-    2000 – Coca Cola enters on the North Korean market
-    2002 – in Atlanta begins the operation Coca Cola Vanilla, which ends with a failure
-    2003 – Coca Cola starts selling its products in Iraq

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Coca-Cola's brief political history

This year marks 125 years since John Pemberton invented carbonated soft drink – Coca-Cola – “cure for nerve trouble, dyspepsia, mental and physical exhaustion, gastric irritability, wasting diseases, constipation, headache, neurasthenia and impotence”. But Coca-Cola was not only a cure, it was also the source of headache and hysteria in the political waters.

The only Coca-Cola that was colorless was created after World War II - for political reasons. It was produced in limited quantities, by special order, for a Russian Marshal Georgi Zhukov, who tried Coca-Cola during his negotiations about dividing Germany with the commander of allied forces in Europe, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower. This Coca-Cola was packed in cylindrical bottles that had a red star as a label instead of Coca-Cola’s recognizable logo.

Zhukov really liked this drink, but since the relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began to tighten, it was inconvenient for him to be seen with an American drink in his hands. That is why, on Zhukov’s request, and with the approval of U.S. President Harry Truman, Coca-Cola Company manufactured colorless Coke and packed it so that it looked like vodka. 

Last year, Coca-Cola Company celebrated its 100 birthday, and this year they will celebrate 125 years since John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola. 

In the beginning, Coca-Cola was advertised as “Delicious. Refreshing. Exhilarating. Invigorating” drink and also as a cure for nerve trouble, dyspepsia, mental and physical exhaustion, gastric irritability, wasting diseases, constipation, headache, neurasthenia and impotence. By often following U.S. foreign policy, rarely acting in conflict with American interests, and eventually becoming the symbol of globalization, in the past decades Coca-Cola was also and a source of headaches and hysteria in the (international) political waters.

During World War II, a special group of Coca-Cola employees called “Technical Observers” was among U.S. army soldiers. These Technical Observers supervised the shipment and operation of 64 complete bottling plants that distributed nearly 10 billion bottles of Coca-Cola to servicemen and women.

Military personnel who worked in Coca-Cola military plants became just as important as mechanics who worked on the maintenance of aircraft and tanks. And thanks to its popularity, along with lobbying in the army with the statement that this drink was a key product in the war, in 1942 Coca-Cola Company managed to get an exemption from sugar rationing.

A company that at all times sought to show how much symbolic power its drinks has on U.S. troops, also functioned and on the opposing side, in Germany, where before the war this drink was very popular. One of the Nazi statements was that “America never contributed anything to world civilization but chewing gum and Coca-Cola”.

Some publicists have stated that Coca-Cola Company had controversial relations with Germany, before and during World War II: during the war, Coca-Cola branches didn’t stopped working in Germany, but they weren’t able to import the necessary raw materials in the country. Publicist Mark Pendergrast wrote that several top executives from Coca-Cola branch in Germany were in fact members of the Nazi Party, and there are also records that this company sold millions of bottles to Hitler's Germany.

This obscure and not completely explored part of Coca-Cola history was not an obstacle for this product name to become linked not only to America but to key values of Western countries, such as "every kind of freedom, democracy and free market capitalist”, during the Cold War period. Parallel to that, Coca-Cola was expanding in the world, and the American political influence was strengthening. 

In the early fifties, those who were opposed to American influence marked Coca-Cola as an American cultural weapon.  In relation to this, in France was created a term “coca-colonization” - It was used by leftists who fought against opening of factories for bottling Coca-Cola drink. They even tried to prove that Coca-Cola is poisonous. The former president of the Coca-Cola Company, Robert Woodruff, stated that leftist’s hostility towards Coca-Cola comes from the fact that Coca-Cola is the very “essence of capitalism”.

Despite the logic of capitalism, and in the name of protecting the interests of U.S. foreign policy, until the nineties Coca-Cola was practically not present in the Eastern European market. The first opportunity for Coca Cola to install facilities in Russia, in mid-sixties, was not used because the only possible partner was a communist government (there were no private firms in Russia during that regime). For Coca-Cola, that probably wasn’t a problem, but it was for the U.S. government. In that period, U.S. Army was in war with Vietnam, and if Coca-Cola started working in Russia, they would have financed the communist side, American public enemy number one. 

To this day, connection between Coca-Cola and American values brings damage to the Coca-Cola Company in the Middle East.  There, in mid-sixties, Coca-Cola was accused of anti-Semitism and in the following decades it has become a symbol of "American occupying" and "anti-Muslim” policy. Some internet sites claim that Coca Cola, read from right to left, in Arabic language means "No Muhammad, no Mecca". Boycott of Coca-Cola is also elaborated with claims that by buying a bottle of Coca-Cola tenth of its price goes to the largest Arabian enemy, Israel.

In 1966, Coca Cola was accused of avoiding working in Israel, in order to protect sales of its products in the Arabian world. Things started to get complicated when, because of these accusations, Jewish organizations in America begun to boycott Coca-Cola. The company eventually allowed the construction of a bottling plant in Israel, in 1968, but that again caused boycott similar to that of Arabian League, which ended in the early eighties.

With that, Coca Cola found itself again on the course of U.S. foreign policy.  Respond to this was creation of authentic Arabian Colas such as Mecca Cola. Recently, the Iranian Minister of Industries, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, renewed the idea of boycotting Coca-Cola, because it is a "Zionist product”.

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