They had the cute and cuddly polar bears who have drunk coke now drinking Pepsi (from the cool Uncle Polar Bear).
Just saw today where they had Santa on vacation in a beach bar, ordering a Pepsi. The bartender asks about his usual Coke preference, to which he replies that he is on vacation and wants to ‘have some fun’. http://www.pepsi.com/
Your thoughts, if any?
I think that Pepsi ad managers are mean spirited and not all that creative. I was put off by the ad. Makes me want to have a Coke in protest.
Saw the polar bear one only. Poorly-conceived ad, in my opinion. It fails on two scores: Uncle Teddy is a caricature of a giant, obnoxious douchebag rolling in, blasting mediocre music and hilariously covered in fake tanning cream. Few people are going to take this character as “fun” or have any sort of positive association with it.
Also, I can’t help but think it’s a bad idea to reference the Coca Cola ad without going all out on the production on some level it may convey “Like Coke - just you know… not quite as good.”
Just the whole idea of co-opting Coca-Cola branding in the first place seems to me to adopting the posture of “Coke Imitator.” It’s been more than a century, it really shouldn’t matter who was there first.
I’ve only seen the Santa one. I had to think about it, and consciously recall the, er, Coke-Santa affiliation, before it even made sense to me. Also, it suggests that Santa is contractually bound to Coke in some professional manner.
Two of Coke’s ads vaguely bugged me - the polar bears meeting the penguins (the species live in different hemispheres) and the polar bears meeting a playful seal. The latter ad always left me muttering “And then the bears jumped in the water, killed the seal, dragged the carcass back onto the ice flow and ate it, while enjoying a nice refreshing Coke.”
First rule of advertising is… Don’t Ever Mention The Competition (all it does is put your competitor into the mind of your customers). If I was Coke, I’d be pleased with the free publicity.
Toyally true. Makes you look inferior and insecure. Not an attractive trait in a brand. Plus it makes the customer think ‘Hey they’re talking about their competitor. May just have to take a look at them to see what the fuss is about’.
I think that rule died a long time ago. The ads are kind of interesting in that they’re more about tweaking Coke than selling Pepsi, so I don’t think they’re going to sell much Pepsi. Which makes it sort of pointless.
It’s also just plain bad - the graphics are pretty lame and don’t measure up to the quality of the original Coke polar bear ads. I guess they’re trying to say that Pepsi is for summer and Coke is for winter? That’s pretty stupid advertising, IMO.
Pepsi has been using Coke in its ads for a while now - don’t forget the Pepsi Max and Coke Zero delivery guys. It’s like the Mac vs PC ads, where they’re saying the competitor is lame, so you should switch. If you can’t throw together an ad showing how great your product is without resorting to making fun of the competitors, I’m going to think you’re just whiny and jealous of their success.
The Mac vs PC ads were ill thought through for the same reason. All they did was get the backs up of PC users and enhance the idea that Mac users are smug (we are, but hey). A poor move compared to their usual marketing, which is very slick.
A radio variant of this ad is on the airwaves, with two elves watching Santa load up his sleigh for his Summer vacation and they notice Santa putting Pepsi in the sleigh instead of Coke.
One asks the other why and the elf says “Santa only drinks Coke in the winter…in the Summer he wants to have fun. Hey I think I’m going to get my Pepsi on right now…do you want a Pepsi too?”
Other elf: “Nooooooo!!!”
1st elf: “What’s the matter dude, don’t you like Pepsi?”
2nd elf: “Of course I want a Pepsi. I yelled ‘Nooooo!’ because I just saw Santa load a thong into his sleigh!”
No- that’s why if you do mention the competition, you should highlight why your product is better rather than just ragging on someone else’s mascot.
The ads did at least say why Macs are supposed to be better, though. The problem was that, as you say, Mac was a smug douche, and the PC character was funny because John Hodgman is really funny.
Oh my god those are obnoxious commercials. They look like shitty parodies of shitty 80s commercials. There’s no wit or subtlety to them. They’re not interesting.
I’m a Pepsi addict, but quite frankly those commercials put Coke in a sympathetic light.
Regarding the sideline about mentioning the competition, Cracked recently did a piece about Energizer vs Duracell (#4, second entry on that page). It’s interesting to me because I’m not old enough to remember the Duracell rabbit, only the Energizer bunny. Energizer created theirs to mock Duracell’s and found they had a wildly popular mascot…only people were still associating “toy bunny” with “Duracell” and actually improved Duracell’s sales over Energizer’s as a result.
Looks like this is one more place I’m out of step. I’ve only seen the Santa commercial, but I thought it was funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but it made me chuckle. It struck me as a cute, clever idea.
I like the slightly older one where the guy who played the Trickster from Supernatural is a Pepsi delivery man, and he gets the Coke delivery man to drink a Pepsi.