COCA PEPSI!
by Chris Reed
What is the difference in marketing between Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola? Not much when it comes to America it seems. For the past few years Simon Cowell has been happy to endorse and take the money of Coca Cola for his American Idol TV show. Now he is just as happy to endorse and take even more money from Pepsi Cola for his other show X-Factor. X-Factor is just launching in the US and Cowell will now be a judge on it after he jumped ship from being a judge on American Idol! It’s basically all the same talentless talent show (they stopped doing Pop Idol in the UK and replaced it with the near identical X-Factor you may remember) with a confused message from a cola drink sponsor. You would think that Pepsi would have a bit more imagination and nous than to just get on the talent show bandwagon as a me-too sponsor. Coke will get the recognition as it has been doing Idol for years but over time neither are going to get cut through and there will be a good deal of confused Americans (yes, even more than usual) who will say Pepsi is sponsoring Idol and Coke is sponsoring X…you wait! Not a great advert for imaginative marketing. What’s the difference between the two….. clearly nothing.
This article first appeared on
http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/03/24/coca-pepsi.aspx