Coke versus Pepsi.
The Coca Cola Company was founded in 1892 to produce a soda beverage invented by a pharmacist in 1886 as ‘tonic’ with extracts from coca leaves and kola beans. Today it is the world’s largest producer of the Coca Cola concentrate that are then sold to franchised dealers and bottlers to sell. The bottlers then add purified soda water.
PepsiCo, Incorporated was founded in 1903 to produce Pepsi Cola, invented in the 1890 by another pharmacist. Pepsi is primarily bottled and sold by the Pepsi Bottling Group.
The two soda giants have very different approaches to advertising their flagship brands:
Coke does not acknowledge Pepsi’s existence at all while Pepsi has advertisement that compare Pepsi and Coke, and the hero in the advertisement choosing Pepsi. There are two classic video clips that come to mind from watching Youtube. The Coke delivery driver who exchanges a drink with the Pepsi driver but then refuses to give back the Pepsi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMo6o0BtFG8), and the boy who buys two cans of Coke from a vending machine just so that he can stand on them to reach for the button for Pepsi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLMpcpn_jEE).
Coke on the other hand does not refer to Pepsi at all. They focus on the 'feel good' factor. A sort of 1960's flower power, love and friendship philosophy. From the polar bear cub who drops into a bunch if penguins and start to dance(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIk7Q_DJIgQ), or criminal ‘hero’ of the Grand Theft Auto who suddenly becomes a nice person and all around good guy after drinking coke (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIk7Q_DJIgQ).
Pepsi tries to market itself as the rebel/new generation’s choice differentiation from coke which was implied to be the taste of your parents’ generation.