Advertisement Review: Coke vs Pepsi - banned commercial with kid

Mine is bigger, mine is better, and people like me more.

Competition is hot on planet earth. Whether its competing for survival, competing for the girl, or competing to sell one more can of pop then the next guy, everyone is trying to win.

In advertising we spend the majority of our careers finding the USP of various companies. In layman's terms: How is this guys' bigger and better then that guys' and what will make him more popular.

I recently saw an advertisement in which Pepsi was positioning itself as the more popular cola over Coke. Normally, the one that is 'top of mind' is the one that sells more, but apparently, in this ad, it's strictly a popularity contest, a challenge of tastes as it were.
For giants such as Pepsi and Coke I can see why this may be a stance they are willing to take, but for others I believe sales to outrank brand popularity (though as I write this sentence I have a hard time differentiating between popularity and sales and how the two are even separate entities).

ANYWAY. I sort of lost my train of thought there. Back to the ad. Good ad? Bad ad? (It says that it's banned... I am confused as to why). It has a good concept but I am not sure of its impact. When I first watched it I thought "Wow, what a great idea. Kind of like using the 'other' brands ladder to reach the upper shelf where the 'good' brand is". However, after analyzing the ad a little further, and my original thought again, I wondered just how effective it really was. In the case of the ladder, does it not look good for the 'other' ladder to be there, be useful, and fulifll its required duty of bringing you up a few feet, carrying extra weight, and safely returning you to the ground? So what's in a ladder? I suppose a few extra features may give the 'good' brand a boost, but then what's in a can of cola? Sugar, water, more sugar, and some extra sugar for good measure (or bad measure if referring to your waistline). Technically, Coke sold 2 pops to the kid, Pepsi only sold 1. Will it even out when the kid is old enough to reach the Pepsi button on his own? I suppose that would depend on how health conscious he grows up to be, but I suppose in the long run Pepsi would win this battle. Then again, Coke has its own campaigns in which it is clearly prospering, so with their own campaigns on top of the bonus cans from Pepsi maybe they are ahead.
Coke and Pepsi are difficult brands to compare because it is rare that a person sits on the fence, and those that do simply order what is convenient. Me for example, I am the farthest from a pop drinker as one could be, but on the off chance that I have a sip I ask for Pepsi. I tell myself that it hurts my throat less but I think I was just brought up around it from my dad and therefore slightly favor it. I really can't see the difference but my dad swears by it, so much so that if a restaurant only sells coke he will order a water instead. So Coke and Pepsi have strong brand loyalty and therefore I do not believe that an ad such as this would do anything more then have Coke drinkers brag that they sold more pop and Pepsi drinkers laugh at the concept that their brand put out there.

After all of that obscure mumble jumble of a blog entry I suppose the Moral is this: Pepsi failed. Why? Because we are talking about Coke.

Thank you for visiting my page. I hope that you learned a thing or two and that I was able to spark some interest into the depths of advertising.

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