The Cola War
Cola war – the much anticipated battle of advertising among the Coca cola and Pepsi has just started. The season of summers is around the corner. The next few months (March – June) are the most crucial for the Cola giants where they make most of the sales.
Coca cola and Pepsi have started their TV campaigns to create the buzz. I suspect that the noise will increase to the peak during the upcoming IPL, where the efforts would be on full throttle.
Pepsi has roped in the bhaijaan of Bollywood the Salman Khan, who was earlier associated with ThumsUp for a long period of time. The Solo swag campaign was launched with a typical song. The TVC with Salman has just debuted with focus on the SWAG. However, consumers are so accustomed to Salman and ThumsUp, that it would be a herculean task for Pepsi to remove that bond from the deep inside conscious and replace it with their Swag campaign. Even, when I saw the commercial first, the image of ThumsUp immediately popped-up.
Coca cola, on the other hand, is using Ranbir Kapoor, who is immensely popular with the younger generation, specially females. Coke has cleverly used the masculine/romantic appeal of Ranbir to woo the girls in the campaign. The icing on the cake is the remix version of “Inteha ho gayi intezaar ki” as the background music. The tagline is also changed to “Turn up your day” (in HIndi, it shows Coke Khule Dil Khile).
This ad reminds me one of the old ad with Alia bhat and Siddhartha, which used the remix of Tum jo Mil gaye ho.
So, the battle lines are drawn. Also, eagerly awaiting for what Coca cola is planning to do with ThumsUp. IN the past, they have used Ranvir Singh and taste the thunder concept beautifully with adventure based ads. Is there anything new this summers? Do not miss the Budweiser Selfie concept.
Updated: 13 April, 2020. Well no one has seen the Corona crisis which has started a different war – a war of survival for Humans against Covid-19!