Cola War
...chronologically shows Britney fashionably wearing decadal clothes and singing alternate versions of the Pepsi song in a new year. The commercial ends with Britney dancing in the parking lot of a Pepsi diner in the year 2002 singing the words, “Come feel the joy all around, each generation has found, they’ve got their own kind of sound, it‘s time to shout it out…”. According to Roy B. White in his article titled Why it‘s Cool to Troll Through Time, “Ad experts say consumers like the idea of products that weather the times. There‘s a certain comfort zone there.” Pepsi Cola uses this commercial to relate their product to a diverse audience by incorporating an icon in the music industry today, with a variety of generations, and conveying the message that everyone benefits from the “joy of Pepsi”. In spite of this, Coca-Cola portrays real-to-life scenarios in their television advertising instead of celebrity influence. According to BBCNews.com, “A company spokesperson for Coca-Cola said it Coca-Cola tended to use more generic and timeless themes rather than individuals or pop groups in its campaigns”. An example of Coca-Cola’s attempt to entice their potential consumers is a commercial aired in the spring of 2001. Six weeks before their high school graduation, five teenagers rest on a subway train after an exciting night at a concert. A young man observes his sleeping friends while holding a can of Coca-Cola firmly in one hand and narrates, “…It hit me, that was the best night of my life. And I kind of wished we could all stay on that train forever.” A soothing woman’s voice then sings in the background, “Life tastes good, Coca-Cola” as the camera directs the viewer’s attention not at the teenagers, but to a moving subway train and the name Coca-Cola in the lower right hand corner of the screen. This commercial relates to men and women of all ages and generates an emotion that everyone has experienced at least one time in their life. Even though a consumer may not have been in the given situation, they will reminisce about a prior event that affected them the same way the boy in the advertisement felt. Coca-Cola uses this technique as an, “…invitation to consumers throughout the world to enjoy Coca-Cola and life’s simple pleasures” Professor Jack Solomon describes this procedure by writing in his essay Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising, “…advertisers work on the deepest, most coercive human emotions of all.” Coca-Cola’s goal is to make their costumers think of their product and this commercial whenever they are reminded of a sentimental and enjoyable event. The soft drink industry customer base is probably the widest and deepest base in a world that is flooded with some many categories. According to Beverage Digest the customer base for soft drinks is a whopping 95% of regular users in the United States. Pepsi prefers to segment itself as the beverage choice of the “New Generation”, Generation Next, or just as the “Pepsi Generation”. These terms adopted in Pepsi’s advertising campaigns are referring to the markets that marketers refer to as Generation X. The Generation X consumer is profiled to be between the ages of 18 to 29. They have high expectations in life and are very mobile and active....