co*ke Vs Pepsi - A Study Of The Evolution Of Their Branding (2024)

Every time you think of soft drinks, two big names that come to your mind are Coca-Cola and Pepsi and rightfully so, as both these brands have worked super hard to earn the prestige they have today. But, do you know how over the years these brands have worked against each other to emerge as the best soft drink brands? Their rivalry is very well known in the marketing world, and we will be discussing the same in this article.

Coca-Cola Cola aka co*ke was established in the year 1886 in Atlanta by a pharmacist named Dr John S. Pemberton. 12 years later, Pepsi aka Pepsi Cola was established in the year 1898 by Caleb Bradham in North Carolina and that is where the struggle to surpass each other in the marketing efforts began. Both these brands worked hard and adopted several tactics to be the number 1 in the soft drink industry.

In the aspect of brand value, Coca-Cola has always surpassed Pepsi. According to recent statistics from Interbrand, Coca-Cola was eighth on the list of the world’s most valuable brands with a brand value of 33 Billion US dollars, while Pepsi had the thirty-fifth position in the same list with a brand value of 18 Billion US dollars in the year 2023.

Over the years, both companies have been in constant competition to be the no. 1 soft drink producer and they have both come a long way. Further, in this article, we are about to discuss comparatively how both companies have evolved in their branding processes and emerged as two big soft drink companies in the 21st century. So we suggest you just sit back and relax and keep reading!!

First thing first, we all know, a logo is the face of any brand and if we don’t talk about how the logos of both these companies evolved with time, this article would somehow be incomplete.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi have changed their logos multiple times over the years. Though the basic structure of the modern Coca-Cola logo is very similar to their first logos launched in the 1900s while the modern Pepsi logo is almost unrecognizable from the old logos, it will still be unfair to say that the Coca-Cola logo hasn’t changed over the years.

The first-ever logo of Coca-Cola was introduced in the year 1986 and had a much simpler and more formal font than what we see in their logo today. As the brand entered the 20th century, the brand logo was changed multiple times and the old formal font was given up to opt for a much fun and easy font. Also, the iconic ribbon at the end of the first ‘C’ was introduced into the logo during the same time.

Coca-Cola’s logo largely remained the same till the 1950s when a new fishtail logo was introduced. The logo went along for about a decade and was later given up to adopt the new logo in the 1960s, much similar to the modern logo. Also, Coca-Cola’s much-recognized red-and-white colour combination was introduced in the 1950s. In the 1960s logo, the wave was also introduced, which stayed around for quite a while and became a major part of recognition for the brand.

This logo was kept the same for more than two decades until 1985 when Coca-Cola introduced their product in a redefined way under the name of New co*ke and changed their logo to more formal and simpler fonts. The consumers didn’t react very positively to this redefinition of the brand and the brand later decided to go back to their old logo only a couple of years later.

The logo of Coca-Cola introduced in the year 1987 was strikingly similar to the logo introduced in the 1960s except that in this logo, the wave was reintroduced and the name was ‘Coca Cola co*ke’. In the 1990s, moving with the times, the brand introduced a logo with a more gradient and gloss with a pattern of water droplets on it. This logo too didn’t stay long and was given up in the early years of the 21st century to introduce the Coca-Cola Classic logo which is almost identical to the 1960s logo. The final logo was introduced by the brand in the year 2009 in their iconic red colour much similar to their 1940s logo.

In 2021, the brand announced the new logo as “magical” and was termed “genius” by the design guru. It has been designed with the signature red and white colours of the brand, which symbolises ‘youth’, ‘passion’, ‘energy’ and ‘class’. The logo seems to be hugging the Coca-Cola bottle, symbolizing the happiness and good times together. The brand new logo was introduced with the tagline “Real Magic”.

Compared to Coca-Cola, Pepsi went through more changes in its logo design and its final logo looks completely different than what it had started with. The first logo of Pepsi was introduced two years after Coca-Cola, with the name Pepsi Cola and had a very strange font in red colour.

Similar to Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola also adapted the more fun fonts with the ribbon pattern in the same red colour. Minor changes were again made to the logo in the year 1906 after which it stayed the same for a long time, till the year 1940 and was again introduced with only a few changes to the older design.

It wasn’t till the year 1950, that the major changes in the logo design of Pepsi came when the iconic blue, red and white colours of Pepsi were introduced as a mark of patriotism and respect to their motherland. This colour combination has ever since stayed in the brand logo of Pepsi. In 1950, the old logo was only put between the Blue and red stripes.

In the year 1962, the brand dropped the name Pepsi Cola for the soft drink and simply took up the name Pepsi and the old logo was redefined for the name Pepsi. Further minor changes occurred in the logo later in the year 1973 to reproduce the logo. In the year 1991, Pepsi took out the text from the circular symbol to create a much simpler logo design.

7 years later in 1998 Pepsi again changed their logo, adding more blue to it as they put their iconic circular logo and text over the blue background. Later in the year 2005, similar to what Coca Cola had done in the 1990s, Pepsi too added the gradient and gloss pattern of the droplets to their logo from 1998. Finally, in the year 2008, they opted to simplify their logo as they modified the circular logo and added the Pepsi text in the simpler font and thus was produced the new logo of Pepsi, by which we know it today.

In the year 1962, the brand dropped the name Pepsi Cola for the soft drink and simply took up the name Pepsi and the old logo was redefined for the name Pepsi. Further minor changes occurred in the logo later in the year 1973 to reproduce the logo. In the year 1991, Pepsi took out the text from the circular symbol to create a much simpler logo design.

7 years later in 1998 Pepsi again changed its logo, adding more blue to it as they put their iconic circular logo and text over the blue background. Later in the year 2005, similar to what Coca-Cola had done in the 1990s, Pepsi too added the gradient and gloss pattern of the droplets to their logo from 1998. In the year 2008, they opted to simplify their logo as they modified the circular logo and added the Pepsi text in a simpler font and thus produced the new logo of Pepsi, which we know today.

And recently, in 2023, Pepsi went back to its 90s roots and brought back a similar design. The logo has been designed to work and emphasize the distinctive Pepsi design that consumers recognize. Pepsi introduced electric blue and black in their new logo to represent vibrancy and bring out a contemporary edge.

Coca-Cola’s television advertisem*nts have been very clever and creative all these years. As a soft drink brand, unlike Pepsi, they didn’t only focus on teens and young adults but on all consumers of all ages. Some of their popular television advertisem*nts include the ‘Simpsons’ advertisem*nt for Coca-Cola or the advertisem*nt featuring the family of polar bears, thus endorsing the warm feelings of togetherness and love.

Coca-Cola comes out to look like a family-friendly brand.

The range of advertisem*nts under Coca-Cola India also portrays the same fact. A good example is the 2003 ‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’ advertisem*nt, starring Aamir Khan. This was one of Coca-Cola’s most successful ad campaigns in India,

Coca-Cola has featured Bollywood’s Mr Perfectionist, Aamir Khan in several creative advertisem*nts. But besides him, you also get to see other young Bollywood celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone, Diljit Dosanjh, etc in the ad campaigns of Coca-Cola India. These celebrities are idols of the young people in the nation, thus helping the brand to endorse their product among young consumers. But, their other ad campaigns like the ‘Share a co*ke’ ad campaign help target a wider range of audience, not just young consumers but also mature adults in their midlife.

In conclusion, we can say that Coca-Cola always focuses on the more emotional side of its consumers and has emerged as a fun and trustworthy brand.

Pepsi too has represented itself as a friendly brand just like Coca-Cola, but it primarily focused on teens and young adult consumers. Pepsi’s advertisem*nts have been clever but have mostly featured young celebrities to impress their target audience. Some such celebrities include Micheal Jackson, Britney Spears, etc. Pepsi has also used Indian celebrities like Ranbir Kapoor & Priyanka Chopra and cricket stars like Virat Kohli & Harbhajan Singh in their advertisem*nts to endorse their product.

Pepsi has been giving Coca-Cola a competition in advertising for a long time. Just like the ‘Thanda Matlab Coca Cola’ advertisem*nt campaign, Pepsi too started a ‘Pepsi Thi Pee Gaya’ advertisem*nt campaign. Pepsi has time and again done advertisem*nts as an open challenge to Coca-Cola. Take Pepsi’s ‘The Pepsi Challenge’ for an example. It started in the year 1975 and proved to be a huge hit for the company.

So, for ‘The Pepsi Challenge’, people were challenged to take a blindfold test, where they were made to taste two soft drinks one of which was Pepsi and the other was co*ke. The participant didn’t know which one he drank first and was asked to choose the soft drink, whose taste he liked more. According to the brand, more than 50% of people liked the taste of Pepsi more than co*ke. Now, you must notice that both the brands differ a lot when it comes to taste. Where Coca-Cola has a fizzier and less sweet raisin vanilla taste, Pepsi has a less fizzy citrusy sweet kind of taste. Nevertheless, ‘The Pepsi Challenge’ proved a success for the brand.

Another instance will be Pepsi’s Halloween advertisem*nt of the year 2018, which featured a Pepsi can with a Coca-Cola drape wishing a scary Halloween. There have been many such advertisem*nts by Pepsi in a way to try and look better than Coca-Cola.

So, we can say that Pepsi has appeared to be a more appealing brand for young consumers, but at the same time also tried desperately hard to look like a superior brand against Coca-Cola.

Brand recognition is the extent to which your consumers identify your brand, not just from your products but also your logo, packaging, taglines, etc. Brand recognition is a very important aspect of any brand. Your brand recognition decides in the right sense how much your consumers value your brand. Stronger brand recognition ensures that more and more people are familiar with your brand and the more they know about you, the more they can trust you. Let’s discuss the brand recognition of Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi sell their products in more than 200 countries, but when it comes to brand recognition, co*ke trumps Pepsi. Now, there are multiple aspects to this, one, for example, is that Coca-Cola has won a kind of trust among its consumers, leading them to expect the same iconic flavour of co*ke every single time. This consistency of flavour lets the brand appear trustworthy.

Another reason will be that Coca-Cola has stuck to a single kind of pattern in its logos and designs. As we discussed earlier, even though Coca-Cola has changed its logo nearly as many times as Pepsi, they have made only minor changes in the original design, essentially keeping the core design the same. Pepsi, on the other hand, has gone through drastic changes in its logo design.

Another aspect that Coca-Cola uses in its favour is the iconic shape of its bottles. As you would have noticed, all Coca Cola’s from the glass bottles to large plastic bottles, all have the same shape irrespective of the quantity of the soft drink. In fact, in the year 2015, they introduced aluminium bottles in a similar shape to celebrate 100 years of the soft drink. You can also see the shape of the bottle displayed at the end of some Coca-Cola advertisem*nts.

No matter where you are in the world you can easily recognize a co*ke bottle with its iconic shape and unique red and white colours. But, it doesn’t work quite the same way with Pepsi. The brand does a lot to increase its brand recognition, but since it primarily focuses on young consumers it could not build much trust among the mature consumers.

However, Pepsi has also used creative initiatives like the Pepsi Refresh Project that started in the year 2010 and has been continued ever since causing quite a stir among consumers. It has proved to be a very successful initiative for Pepsi and helped increase brand awareness for the brand. With this initiative, Pepsi helps people with new ideas in improving their community by giving them grants.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi have worked hard over the years to build a strong brand presence among their consumers. Both work with different marketing strategies and different target audiences, but they have been in close competition in the ‘soft drinks’ niche. Coca-Cola may seem like a more successful brand than Pepsi, but Pepsi has also been improving itself over the years as a brand to prove like a tough competitor to Coca-Cola.

If you want to know more about this iconic rivalry, you should visit the following sites.

Comparison of brands Pepsi Cola vs Coca Cola

Pepsi Vs co*ke The Power Of A Brand