The cola wars are taking an unusual twist as the Pepsi-Cola Co division of PepsiCo introduces its first campaign in years meant to offer rational reasons to drink its flagship beverage rather than intangible emotional ones.
The campaign for the Pepsi-Cola brand, which gets under way today, carries the theme "Pepsi. It's the cola." The television and radio commercials, online advertisements, billboards and store signs portray the product as hero, presenting Pepsi as the perfect accompaniment to all manner of food, like hot dogs, snack chips and pizza, and all manner of fun, like football games and dates.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
Think of it as "Things go better with Pepsi," a sell almost as soft as before but with a more pointed purpose.
"It's a different approach for us," said David Burwick, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the Pepsi-Cola North America division of Pepsi-Cola. He spoke Wednesday at a presentation of the US$150 million campaign to reporters in Midtown Manhattan.
The campaign replaces right-brain ads infused with celebrities and music that began with the theme "The joy of cola" in 1999, which became "The joy of Pepsi" in 2001. Indeed, for years, Pepsi ads have been replete with jingles, humor, stars and special effects, a far cry from the prosaic days when Pepsi was called "the kitchen cola" and ads carrying the theme "Be sociable, have a Pepsi" showed chic suburbanites grazing on hors d'oeuvres at patio parties.
"We're not walking away from celebrities, divas," Burwick said, referring to recent endorsers like the singers Britney Spears and Beyonce. "We're walking to a new strategy: Pepsi goes great with social occasions and food."
The new "It's the cola" theme, for those with a fondness for advertising trivia, echoes an old slogan for Olympia beer, "It's the water," though executives at the Pepsi creative agency -- BBDO Worldwide in New York, part of the Omnicom Group -- said they were unfamiliar with that previous pitch.
Like Olympia beer, Pepsi is seeking to give consumers tangible reasons to choose it over the myriad brands sold by rival beverage makers. That is important because Pepsi sales have slumped as consumers turned to alternative products -- some made by Pepsi-Cola -- like water, sports drinks, juices and teas.
Through the first nine months of this year, sales of Pepsi in major retail outlets fell 5.5 percent compared with the same period a year ago, said John Sicher, editor and publisher at Beverage Digest, an industry newsletter. In contrast, sales of Coca-Cola Classic, the flagship soft drink of the Coca-Cola Co, fell 2.9 percent in that time while sales of all carbonated soft drinks fell 0.1 percent.
"The challenge, and it's a huge one, is to figure out how to restart the growth of the big regular brands," said Sicher, who attended the presentation. By regular he meant sugared; brands like Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper have been growing while their caloried counterparts have been losing their fizz.
One reason colas have gone flat is that water and other drinks are being successfully peddled to shoppers with functional appeals stressing product attributes like hydration, nutrition, refreshment and taste.
"What we may have lost a little bit is the grounding: `What's the stuff for? Why do I want it? Why am I drinking it?'" said Ted Sann, chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO New York.
"Occasionally, it's good to remind people it goes great with food," Sann said. "With a hamburger, would you rather have a diet peach iced tea or a Pepsi?"
Indeed, said Katie Lacey, vice president for colas and media -- yes, that is her title - at Pepsi-Cola North America, the No. 1 reason Pepsi buyers give in surveys for drinking it is that "it goes well with food."
And the fare in the initial ads tilt toward burgers, frankfurters, fries and snacks. Lacey said the goal was to show "a realistic balance" of "a range of foods." One commercial, saluting tailgating diners at football games, shows corn and salad as well as meat, she said, while another, featuring the comedian David Chappelle, uses baked potato chips as a prop rather than fried ones and shows a bowl of fruit on a counter. Of the first dozen or so signs, one depicts a chicken wrap sandwich; the rest celebrate the likes of pastrami sandwiches, meatloaf and subs.
"I don't see that as much of a risk," Gary Hemphill, senior vice president for information services at the Beverage Marketing Corp, a consulting company, said of the emphasis on hefty edibles, "though fringe groups may have something to say," he added, about a campaign for a colored sugared water saluting calorie-rich food.
Hemphill, who also attended the presentation, played down another risk inherent in the campaign, that by focusing on food Pepsi will drive customers to Coke Classic. The reason: Coca-Cola brands control about two-thirds of the important fountain segment of the market, for soft drinks sold in places like restaurants and movie theaters. Pepsi-Cola products, by contrast, trail with a 22 percent share.
"Pepsi is certainly widely available enough to make that sound strategy," Hemphill said. While Coca-Cola products are found in chains like McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's, Pepsi-Cola brands are sold in restaurants like Applebee's, KFC and Pizza Hut.
"Obviously, Coke has more QSR business than we do," Burwick said, using the initials for quick-service restaurant, the industry term for the fast-food outlets where Coca-Cola products predominate.
"But there are literally hundreds of thousands of places where you can eat and buy Pepsi," he added.
In recent months, the "Real" campaign for Coke Classic has portrayed it as a complement to food. For instance, one commercial shows a young man eating the empanadas meant for his roommate and another shows the actress Salma Hayek noshing on tacos.
Coca-Cola, too, has trod variants of the "It's the cola" path in previous campaigns, as witnessed by themes like "Things go better with Coke," "Coca-Cola. Making good things taste better" and "Coke adds life." There were also those rhyming signs in Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn in the 1960s, proclaiming "Nothing beats a Coke and pizza."
The food focus "makes a hell of a lot of sense" for Pepsi, said Allen Rosenshine, chairman and chief executive at BBDO. "The market has become more rational, driven by specific choices, and if cola has suffered for that, the answer is to make cola more relevant."
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