This is Pepsi's 1905 logo,
and this is Coke's from the same time period.
Now, watch them evolve or in the case of Coke, stay the same.
This doesn't mean Pepsi is indecisive.
Instead, it's a clue that
the great soda rivalry is in fact about something other than taste.
Pepsi has a weird metallic aftertaste.
Pepsi has a sharper taste,
and I think the carbonation affects both of them differently.
For years, consumers have obsessed over the smallest differences in taste.
The Pepsi Challenge was a marketing campaign started in 1975.
It featured a blind tasting of Pepsi and Coke.
The results, more Americans preferred Pepsi.
But throughout their history,
Coke has held a firm grasp on the market.
So, why? Both brands are courting entirely different consumers.
If we look closer at Pepsi's marketing,
it makes the case that this soda brand embraces change,
while Coke keeps itself firmly entrenched in the classic past.
This is a leaked marketing document by the Arnelle group.
The firm executed the highly controversial $1 million Pepsi logo redesign in 2008.
This document called Breathtaking recorded
all that went into designing the new Pepsi Blue.
In it, the company explains
its diverse inspiration, the Hindu tradition of numerical harmony as spatial organizing,
the Vitruvian Renaissance, the elements of energy,
Rene Descartes' La Geometrie,
and even the Earth's magnetic fields.
At first, the media was all over it.
But the soda has seen steady sales since.
Rebranding is core to Pepsi.
Change is part of its DNA,
and it's part of what makes the company so successful.
It's always exciting. It's innovative,
and innovation is a part of its basic brand personality.
That is what it's selling.
It's selling excitement, warmth, young,
and therefore, it needs to change to be authentic to its brand.
In the case of Coke, it is wholesomeness,
America, joy, very down-to-earth kind of an appeal.
This central difference is manifested in the brands' mascots.
Coke is Santa Claus and polar bears.
Pepsi is Michael Jackson,
Britney Spears, and who could forget, Kendall Jenner.
Pepsi's brand essence involves change.
Therefore, it must change, and that change,
I don't think it's necessarily a negative since that is very much a part of its Bassano.
Coke tried to change once.
Introducing the new taste of Coca-Cola.
It doesn't have the zazz that you need when you want a coke.
Very disappointed. I think we've lost the American tradition.
For Coke loyalists, it was a departure.
It signified a violation of what drinkers had come to expect: sameness, consistency.
Coke found it was more important to keep
their existing customers happy rather than find new ones,
and that's the bigger picture here.
Coke isn't after Pepsi's customers, and vice versa,
and the public may perceive a rivalry between the two brands when in reality,
the two seem to coexist quite peacefully.
Remember that logo that kept changing?
It's part of that very same strategy.
Pepsi has set its sights on a particular customer,
one that embraces change.
So, practically, the opposite of Coke's target.
I would always go for a Coke over Pepsi because it's
just the classic thing that we always had growing up.
When we ordered pizza,
we had coke with it. It's classic.
Despite any notion that Coke and Pepsi are one and the same,
they're courting a totally different soda drinker.
A 2016 study by two Emory professors,
Jagdish Sheth and Anthony Koschmann,
showed that each brand has an insanely loyal base.
Coke retained 94.4 percent of its loyal households from one quarter to the next.
Pepsi kept 91 percent.
I feel like a traitor.
I feel like I've let down generations and my ancestors when I switch.
Now, I feel silly for having this undying loyalty to Coke,
almost, now that I taste Pepsi,
but Coke is just where my brain goes when I'm like,
"Okay, it's time for a fizzy bev."
Today, Pepsi and Coke market to the soda drinker who matches what they stand for.
In other words, there is no rivalry.
So, what's your pick?
Is it because of taste or something else?
Let us know in the comments below,
and don't forget to like and subscribe.