There are plenty of rivalries among various entities, institutions, nations and persons. Some of them are highly material, others are more symbolic; some are about military domination, others about technological leadership.
Religions, ideologies, lifestyles everything can be put into rivalry context. Marketing, advertising and mass culture are all about competition and rivalry. In this article, I will concentrate on two iconic beverages Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, (Coca-Cola comes first because alphabetically C is before P, and this is the only reason). “Brand wars” is a notion everybody knows, and straight, sometimes vulgar “What is better” question might be considered as a question of everlasting character. In our case the question becomes “What is better, Coke or Pepsi”.
From the American market, where both brands had originated in the end of 19th century, the whole planet became some sort of a battlefield. Strategies both companies employ in order to face regional peculiarities and to adapt to particular national ambient are truly fascinating. Paying the homage to the limitation of article size, I won’t write about all the aspects regarding Coke-Pepsi relations. I would like to include the third element into Coca-Pepsi boundary, namely, the Soviet Union (Russia, after dissolution) and bring to your attention the article about this triangle.
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Khrushchev is learning how to be sociable sipping Pepsi. Moscow, 1959 |
Pepsi march along the Soviet Union started with the first mutual Soviet-American exhibition that was held in Moscow in 1959 in order to make calm relations between the two superpowers a bit warmer. Vice-president of PepsiCo, Donald Kendall, was among the participants, obviously, from the American side, and not without the help of Richard Nixon, he promoted Pepsi to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. “Khrushchev is learning how to be sociable” with Pepsi became the part of the advertising campaign with slogan “Be sociable, have a Pepsi”.
Meanwhile Coca-Cola was distributed in more than 100 countries, not including the Soviet Union. In 1974 (look at the gap from 1959 to 1974), the first Pepsi plant was opened in Novorossiysk, Russia, and mass distribution started in 1979.
Pepsi became the first Western brand introduced to the soviet society. This could have made sense, as being first somewhere is always beneficial, strategically speaking, for any brand. But in the case of Pepsi-Coke -USSR triangle, the situation turned upside down with the fall of the Soviet Union. Strongly connected to the USA economically and, of course, symbolically, Coca-Cola is probably, the most “American” brand ever; in the last decade of the 20th century when one said Coca-Cola, one presupposed America, and vice versa. Popularity of Coca-Cola can not be overestimated. Let me bring in the Cold war joke that could serve as a salient example of this popularity. It is about American astronauts who landed on the moon just to find some Russians painting the moon red. The advice they got from their base was to write Coca-Cola after Russians left.
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Coca-Cola sign on the moon, a joke from the Cold War times |
So, it was Coke that symbolically represented America and Western capitalism, albeit not presented in the Soviet market. The absence of Coca-Cola in the in the Soviet market during the Cold War turned from the disadvantage to the benefit, as Cold War ended. Coca-Cola was introduced to the Russian market in 1992. The reputation of the most Western brand as well as the unawareness of Soviet consumer about Coke as a product alongside with the wish for changes in everything were extremely beneficial for Coca-Cola. Actually, during so called “coke-colonization” of 90-s, Coca-Cola won the significant share of Russian market, being associated with the new system.
Alexander Minbaev
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