PEPSI Max vs. Coca-Cola Zero

Recently the two beverages giants, Coca-Cola and PEPSI, rolled-out their sugar-free drink into the Middle East, each brand claims that the new product offers the exact same taste of its premier cola drink, but without sugar

Brand Name:
Since the sugarless drink is similar to the regular one, it was rational to liaise its name with the premier drink; PEPSI went as high as “Max”, while Coca-Cola went as low as “Zero”.

Max might sound more positive, but Zero is probably more teasing, any brand promises its consumers the best experience and that’s what PEPSI played on, the maximum taste without sugar, Coca-Cola went the other way and decided to baffle consumers by naming the product zero; same taste, zero sugar.

Of course Max‘s unsatisfied consumers would probably go: “Is this the maximum that PEPSI can offer!”, while Zero’s unsatisfied consumers will go: “Zero sugar? No I guess it’s zero taste!”

Packaging:
For some reason both brands decided to go with black as the color of the can, it’s weird, Coca-Cola comes in red while PEPSI uses the blue color, but both brands theme other products with colors that reflect the taste; Fanta and Miranda come in orange, 7up and Sprite are greenish, sugar-free drink is supposed to be black.

Campaign:
Coca-Cola’s campaign revolved around the term “zero” being the name of the brand, and at the same time the main attribute that characterizes the product, zero sugar, but I felt that the Arabic adaptation didn’t go well, the English copy was: “Real taste Zero sugar… then why not weekends with zero ends?”, in Arabic they reorganized the copy, one of the visuals was: “Zero cost marriage? Original coke-taste Zero sugar?”

The English copy made it clear that the product offers a real coke taste without sugar, while the Arabic linked this selling point with impossible things like marriage without costs.

PEPSI launched its campaign under the tagline: “Live life to the maximum”, their TV commercial featured a bold guy with a list of things to do before reaching 30, this daredevil achieves these things through unusual ways; to be the boss the guy brings a lion to the office and scares the manager, then sits in his place, and to drive a super car, he pretends to be a valet parking guy in a hotel then drives away with a super car that he was supposed to park.

Some how it reminded me with Mountain Dew’s approach; be daring, have no fears, know no limits. I believe PEPSI’s campaign was better, but Coca-Cola’s campaign was heavier.

Taste:
I guess this is the most important thing, as a start I’m not a cola drinker, I prefer other flavors, so both of them didn’t taste really good to me, however I felt that Coca-Cola Zero tasted a little bit better than PEPSI Max, which I felt it contained sugar in it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Interesting, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.