The 100 year war!
The Cola Wars between carbonated sugar drink makers Coca-Cola and Pepsi dates back to the American Civil War, and this rivalry has come to define the very spirit of Corporate America and of American Obesity Epidemic!
Pepsi was always considered the wannabe bridesmaid until the early 60s, when their marketing team came up with a brilliant idea — they created a new campaign aimed at the young baby-boomer generation with its generation next campaign calling it the “Pepsi Generation”.
Though multiple other successful marketing campaigns have come out from both Coke and Pepsi; Pepsi’s core theme of targeting the young/hip crowd is still in vogue though, but mostly ends up in a controversy — remember how Stephen Colbert ripped apart the recent Kendall Jennar’s “Attractive Lives Matter” ad along with other Late-Night hosts
The Millenial generation of today is not too excited to drink the sugary syrup and as stats point out, the soft-drink sales have fallen for 12 straight years. Pepsi is tackling this with price increases and smaller bottle sizes and a renewed focus on its healthy snacks market.
This pricing strategy seems to have worked in the short-term as it reported a better than expected second quarter earnings, which was up 2%.
Indra Nooyi, the CEO of Pepsi had a tough time convincing the analysts in the earnings conference call yesterday on this pricing strategy as analysts fear this might backfire if consumers go to cheaper rival brands.
This story originally appeared on AlphaNews Newsletter on July 12, 2017. To subscribe to our newsletter and ensure you don’t miss such stories, click here
