Pepsi tastes better.
Probably. Why is it the other way around in our minds?
Coke and Pepsi. The ultimate love story.
Globally, coke has been in the lead for some time in terms of mentions. And most of the sentiments towards the brand has been positive. Pepsi on the other hand, leads the share of voice game in a few countries and has seen mixed sentiments (And they wish to thank their internal ‘agency’ and Kylie Jenner for the negative sentiments).
All arguments that I’ve witnessed about the Coke vs. Pepsi wars usually come down to taste. Taste is subjective and vague. So, logic and rational thinking can only take you so far if you want a definitive answer.
To put the conundrum to rest, a bunch of neuroscientists plugged some people on to an fMRI machine (an fMRI is like an MRI but it measures brain function as opposed to anatomy. Let me know if you want to learn more about that).
First, a blind test. The results: Majority of the people thought that the cup with Pepsi in it was better tasting. Nothing out of the ordinary.
During blind tests, more people report to like Pepsi, in terms of taste.
They were then split into 2 random groups. One group was presented Coke (with coke branding) and the other with Pepsi. And these are the results.
During the blind tasting, the area of the brain responsible for decision-making and interpreting sight are activated. This is a typical response.
When the brand was queued in, some people from the coke group had activations in their Hippocampus, dlPFC (Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex), mid-brain and the Ventromedial PFC).
The vmPFC intercepts sensory information. The Hippocampus, dlPFC and the mid-brain area light up when it identifies culturally relevant information.
To put simply, some people’s brains lit up when they saw what they had was coke. The same effects were not seen with Pepsi.
This might have something to do with the way the two have been marketed over the years.
Coke has been focusing on being distinct. If you take a look at their campaigns, they have most of the time revolved around love, joy, sharing etc.
Pepsi, on the other hand, has looked at leveraging the popularity of pop icons for the most part. But taking a look at their successful campaigns, they don’t have the centrality and consistency of emotions that coke ads have.
Also, the downside of basing your success on multiple celebrities, is that (a) their popularity can only be short term and (b) their controversies can affect you.
This is another example of distinction vs. differentiation. If you don’t know the difference between these two, read this article from last Tuesday. It is about mental masturbation.
P.S. I’m not a neuroscientist. I am learning about neuroscience so that I can add value to our clients at FUDGE.
P.P.S. I’ve simplified the study about coke and pepsi because language on journals can be a bit too much at times. I’ve uploaded the journal article here, if you can’t stop yourself.
Until we write to you again next week, stay kinky.