Talkwalker’s Battle of the Brands: Coca-Cola vs Pepsi

A weekly section on brand chatter in the social space

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Talkwalker’s Battle of the Brands: Coca-Cola vs Pepsi

With the Cricket World Cup in full swing, it’s no surprise that everyone is focusing on the brands that have gone all out in their marketing efforts this season. Coca-Cola is front and center with it’s extremely engaging campaign this season with Ranbir Kapoor and Paresh Rawal – the duo have won hearts all over and India can’t get enough. But when we talk about Coke, most of us think about Pepsi and vice versa – more so because Ranbir Kapoor has of late been associated with both brands. It’s actually a brilliant move since Pepsi was such a massive sponsor of cricket related events in the past.

We can’t all be Coke since their sponsorship budgets are really one of a kind – but there are definitely ways for brands to go big during an event like the #CWC19 on a small budget. Here are 6 guerrilla marketing hacks you can benefit from!

But back to Coke vs Pepsi!

Mentions

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are in the boxing ring, but looks like this round goes to Coke. A massive surge in mentions towards the end of May (looking at last 30 days data) corresponds to the beginning of the World cup and the second surge in June, corresponds to their ad with Ranbir Kapoor and Paresh Rawal. It’s clear that people seem to like what they see and it’s making waves across the internet and offline. Pepsi on the other hand seems to have played it a bit low key with regard the World Cup. Their India Twitter account has a much larger following than Coke’s, but at the time of writing the post, the account was largely inactive after April 18th, save for one retweet on June 7.

Video mentions:

Both of these brands are highly visual but it’s surprising just how much! Around 36% of Coca-Cola’s mentions come from video and 20% for Pepsi. That’s a big chunk of mentions. For Coca Cola, it’s undoubtedly the ad that’s brought the huge surge recently. For Pepsi, it’s quite interesting because the surge comes from an old video of Yuvraj Singh scoring six sixes during the 2007 T20 world cup that is doing the rounds now, following Yuvi’s retirement announcement. Pepsi’s logo was prominently featured on the pitch during the match.