Rock and Roller Cola Wars 1984

“Coca cola went to town, Pepsi cola shot him down.” The battle amongst the two popular soft drinks Coke and Pepsi traces back to 1970’s. The Cola Wars was a series of advertising campaigns which was initiated by the “Pepsi Challenge”. The advertisement was to prove that Pepsi was preferred over Coke. Pepsi had the idea to approach this task by involving the public which is smart because the public is the audience and the main reason the people at Pepsico go to work in the morning. The method that Pepsi used is similar to that of Nehi used in the 1930’s. The blind taste test would reveal the truth. After the test and the data was gathered in Dallas-Ft. Worth, “Half the Coca-Cola drinkers actually prefer Pepsi.” As a strong opponent in this war Coca-Cola would not accept these results without defending their good name. A year later in 1976, after the “Pepsi Challenge” had spread all the way to Michigan Coke persistently followed up on the Challenge and established that the test was inaccurate because to identify the different brands of cola in the blind taste test Pepsico used two glasses of soft drinks which were labeled with the letter M and Q. M was Pepsi and Q was Coke. Coke gave evidence to show that the results of the “Pepsi Challenge” were invalid by doing the same thing as Pepsi, a blind taste test with the same letters but both gasses were filled with Coca-Cola. Even though both cups had Coca-Cola the public of Dallas-Ft. Worth consistently choose M over Q. Coke proved that it is not exactly that the public prefer Pepsi over Coke in the “Pepsi Challenge” but that the public prefer the letter M over the letter Q. The counter campaign of Coca-Cola did not stop the Pepsico. In 1977 the “Pepsi Challenge” decided to go nationwide. Pepsico used the spread of their campaign to tell the audience that not only did certain areas in America prefer Pepsi but now Pepsi was nationally preferred. The advertising campaigns continued through the 1980’s. Celebrities were used to sell the products as Michael Jackson appeared on the face of Pepsi and Julio Iglesias on that of coke. Coke also used Bill Cosby to point out that Coke is and always will be the original cola.
The Rock and Roller Cola Wars appeared again in the 1990’s making it apparent of the continuous battle between the two cola companies. The booming industry makes it mark showing that something as small as a soft drink is so apparent in the lives of our nation.



Grace, Rodger M. Pepsi Challenge’ Gives Coke Cause for Worry. 1 June 2009 . http://www.metnews.com/articles/2006/reminiscing042006.htm