Strength in Numbers

Advertising is a competitive industry. The success of one brand’s advertising translates to the hindrance of the success of that brand’s competitors. After all, the whole motive behind advertising is to persuade a brands target market that their offering is superior to that of their competitors.

This Coca-Cola print ad does a very blatant and obvious job of communicating just that. Pepsi and Coke are two of the biggest players in the game of soft drinks. Suffice to say these two don’t necessarily like to “play nice”. Depicted here is a beaten and outnumbered Pepsi can lying defeated on the ground. Surrounding it is a crowd of unharmed coke cans smugly towering over the victim.

You don’t have to be Einstein to deduce that the Coke cans beat up the poor Pepsi can. The outcome of this battle signifies in all its simplicity that Coke trumps Pepsi. But it’s not enough to just say, “We’re better than you!”. No, that wouldn’t completely sway an audience. In order for that statement to have any credibility it needs facts supporting its claim.

Imagine a playground littered with school kids. These kids have all been given one of two lunch boxes, a blue one or a red one. One day a kid with a blue lunch box insults another kid’s red lunch box.  In playground world, this signifies war. Naturally to reds rally together to oppose the blues. The question of who wins now depends on how many reds there are to blues.

In the print ad, the coke cans have an advantage in their numbers. It’s this advantage that led to the termination of that poor little Pepsi can. But why would there be so many coke Cans and only one Pepsi can?  The answer is simple. Coca-Cola sales are far greater than Pepsi sales.

To sum it all up, if ever there came to be a “can war” between Coke and Pepsi and they both gathered their infantry, it would be a blood bath for Pepsi. A very light and humorous way of depicting such a brutal outcome, wouldn’t you say?