🔪 The ultimate betrayal
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“Sorry, we only have Pepsi products. Is that okay?”
Whenever you go to a restaurant and order a pop, soda, or soda pop – whatever you want to call it – and you’ll quickly find out which brand they carry.
And although most people can hardly taste a difference between the two... some hardcore fans will flat-out refuse to drink the competitor’s product.
The Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola rivalry has been so ingrained in our culture that it’s practically a personality trait.
There are few brand rivalries like it.
And for marketers, there is so much great stuff to study when a rivalry is this iconic.
The Pepsi v. Coca-Cola rivalry has brought us advertisement gems like this famous Halloween ad:
It was a masterclass in how to position your brand above the competition.
So when it came to the Super Bowl, Pepsi didn’t fail to deliver.
They gave us one of the best rivalry ads that probably exists.
Watch the Pepsi ad here.
Now before we get into the premise of the ad, let's talk about why it actually works.
This ad works because it positions Pepsi as a superior product to its rival, Coca-Cola.
But the true genius of this ad is that it does so through the lens of Coca-Cola’s own brand storytelling – from Coke’s own perspective.
So now that we know what the ad’s objective is, let’s talk about how Pepsi pulls this off brilliantly.
Coca-Cola's polar bear mascots are iconic – they’re easily recognizable and widely beloved.
So Pepsi writes an ad starring Coke’s own mascot.
It opens with one of Coke's polar bears doing a blind taste test between a Pepsi and a Coke can.
He's supposed to know which can is Coca-Cola.
He confidently makes his choice, takes his blindfold off…
And to his utter surprise, he chose… the Pespi! (the horror, the horror 🖤).
We then find the bear in a therapy appointment where his therapist assures him that he’s “not the only one” (because most people also struggle to tell the difference 😛).
The next scene cuts to him longingly staring through a restaurant window, watching people drink Pepsi – his forbidden fruit.
But things take a turn when the lady polar bear (idk, are these bears married?) hands him a Pepsi.
And then we get to my favorite part – because Pepsi did NOT have to go this hard, but I love that they did.
The final scene shows the two Coca-Cola bears caught on the Coldplay cam at a Pepsi concert holding Pepsi cans in Astronmer ex-Ceo fashion.
But instead of trying to hide their forbidden affair with a soda, they fully declare their love for Pepsi.
The commercial ends with the tagline: You deserve taste. You deserve Pepsi.
Pepsi created a brilliant ad by using Coke's own famous mascots to "endorse" their product – a clever spin on celebrity endorsement.
They also lean into the forbidden fruit narrative to make Pepsi feel more desirable than its rival.
It’s another masterclass act in positioning your brand as the best in its market – even with popular rivals.
Pepsi used desire as a weapon by making Coke’s own mascots crave the competition’s product until they couldn’t resist anymore.
This next ad takes desire one step further than most marketers think to go.
Upgrade to premium to read it:
