Pepsi and Coke Advertising Efforts Cause Concern

Soda Pop-Off

The Coca-Cola Effect

Everyone has a preference between Coke and Pepsi, right? Sure, but it may not have anything to do with TASTE.

Perhaps the two most recognized brand names in the world, these soda giants – besides the fact that they both crank out an overpriced product that can make you fat, diabetic, and toothless – have one other thing in common: Massive amounts of advertising. Of course, this is WHY they’re likely the two most recognized brands in the world.

And according to some recent research conducted by Baylor College of Medicine, this fact (the branding) is more relevant to some people’s preference for one of these soda giants over the other than is the product’s taste! Evaluating the cola preferences of 67 volunteers of various cultural backgrounds, the study’s researchers found that:

In blind taste tests, not all subjects preferred the product they’d previously claimed on a survey to like best. (Ironic, since the ultra-successful “Pepsi Challenge” ad campaign was based on the idea that only a cola’s taste matters.)
Labeling cups either “Coke” or “Pepsi” had a profound influence on the subject’s preference for what they were drinking – regardless of which product was actually in the cup they were sipping from.
Subjects showed the Coke logo immediately before being given an unidentified soda to sip during a brain scan exhibited stronger activity in that part of the brain dealing with preferences than in subjects not shown the logo.

Great, so people are susceptible to advertising. Whoopee. What’s this have to do with anything I normally talk about, you’re asking? Only this: Drug companies capitalize on this same phenomenon of preferences based on branding, not results, to peddle their poisons on prime-time TV every night. They’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create desire for their products that’s based on the appeal of slick ads instead of concrete results.

That’s why they all have catchy names instead of just their chemical symbols – so that people will identify with the benefits these names imply, and ask their doctors about them. Think about it: What does the name Viagra make you think of? A raging torrent of virility, right? Sure beats sildenafil citrate. The same goes for high-profile drugs like Levitra, Flonase, Celebrex, and on and on and on. It’s all about branding – what I call the “Coca-Cola Effect.”

A fitting term, I think, seeing as how that most successful cola brand in the universe gets its name from the euphoria produced by a drug (cocaine) that used to be in it.

But this is not ALL that’s new on the soda front

Drink your turkey and gravy!

Call me two-dimensional, but I figured there were basically only two major types of soda-pop: Cola-types and clear-types. Just about everything out there – Coke and Cherry Coke, Pepsi, RC, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Sprite, Fresca, even ginger ale and cream soda – is a variation on these two themes.

But I was wrong

According to a recent Associated Press article, a Seattle firm called the Jones Soda Company is pushing pop in bizarre new directions that defy all logic and reason – except that which serves the bottom line. With such flavors as Turkey and Gravy, Green Bean Casserole, Mashed Potato, Fruitcake, and the semi-normal Cranberry, Jones has taken the soda world by storm, growing from a small operation in the late 1980s serving the skateboarding, skiing, and surfing crowd to a mega-successful brand sold in Target, Albertson’s and Safeway stores.

How on Earth is this possible, you’re asking? According to the article, one Cornell University nutritional sciences professor chalks it up to humans’ natural tendency toward omnivorous-ness, but concedes that both the novelty aspect and the bravado factor may also play a role.

I tend to think it’s these latter two points that are driving sales.

However, I always say: “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it” (about most things, that is). Besides, unlike their clear or cola competition, these sodas have no calories or carbohydrates whatsoever. And at least they remind you of some healthy foods instead of a bag of refined sugar.

Perhaps I’ll try “Turkey and Gravy” with my next cigar.
Always popping off about what’s pulling the wool over our eyes,

William Campbell Douglass II, MD