One World Advertising Presents

A Proposal to Coke and Pepsi

C O N F I D E N T I A L

Conclusions of the Corporate Cola Strategy Analaysis Project

WITH NON-PROBLEMATIC SOLUTION RECOMMENDATIONS

Our recent exhaustive analysis of the multinational cola beverage divisions of Coca-Cola® and PepsiCo® have revealed that neither of these companies are presently taking advantage of significant potential savings in their respective yearly advertising expenses. We find this unfortunate promotional oversight to be typical of many corporate advertising bureaucracies which become enmeshed in self absorbed competition with each other. Neither Coca-Cola® nor Pepsico® (sic) appear capable of any truly new approaches to the marketing strategies which now rule them both. We have observed that the CEO's of both these companies are not only thoroughly insulated from their consumer targets by their own luxury filled lifestyles, but are also physically trapped inside the high security boardrooms and offices deep within their tall buildings. They have become more and more unfamiliar with the exact nature of current reality as the rest of us experience it, and have less and less interaction with any human perceptions which might be occurring outside their own worldview.

The proposal which follows, then, is the inevitable result of a clear, objective, and disinterested analysis of the way things actually are, and as usual, One World Advertising offers it free of charge to whichever of these multinational corporations wishes to vastly increase their dividends while achieving a huge savings coup over their competing cola adversary.

It is first necessary to grasp the simple fact that both Coke® and Pepsi® are, by now, totally familiar brands to everyone on this planet. Their saturation advertising strategies reached the 100% saturation point long ago, yet both brands continue to spend millions every year to make and place their ads and commercials everywhere all the time. The actual value of doing this is now questionable at best since everyone has already tried these drinks and everyone knows everything about them that they will ever need to know.

However, in deference to these two company's ice cold assumptions about the need to constantly counter each other's escalating ad campaigns tit for tat, we are not yet suggesting anything so radical as the elimination of their advertising budgets (although that is a perfectly plausible possibility). For now, our proposal is suitably conservative and virtually unassailable in its logic: If either one of these soft drink giants care to reap a monumental windfall of unexpected profits by doing nothing, they can simply begin placing their ads and commercials every other month, rather than every month. Six months of placements and sponsorships per year rather than twelve months! This would cut their yearly advertising expenses in half, resulting in many millions per year in extra profits. Savings on TV costs alone would be astronomical!

Our easily provable contention is that these six interspersed months of no visibility will have no recognizable effect on sales whatsoever. It is obvious to everyone except these two companies that people are simply no longer buying Coke® or Pepsi® because of their commercials at all, and certainly not on the basis of monthly exposure to these commercials. No one will notice the missing commercials and sales will remain the same as they have always been. This simple, elegant, and foolproof scheme is guaranteed by our research to succeed beyond either of these two companies' wildest dreams of bigger profits.

There may be some slight corporate embarrassment at discovering that all of the millions shelled out on their advertising are not particularly well spent, but their ability to gloat on their newfound shrewdness over the competition's continuing foolishness will undoubtedly make up for that. Of course this economic advantage will not last long before the opposing beverage company institutes a similar advertising policy in a predictably copycat fashion. Ultimately, this new form of de-escalating advertising competition will end up eliminating Coke® and Pepsi® ads for whole years at a time with no loss to these companies respective yearly incomes.

Finally, the tried and true artistic dictum of "less is more" will finally come to fruition in corporate awareness for the first time in advertising history.

One World Advertising hereby offers up this new strategy to both Coca-Cola® and PepsiCo® for the taking. We expect nothing in return. Who will be first?


Source: pamphlet included in the original release of Negativland's Dispepsi.

Advertising is much more than information. Advertising is all about image. The best advertising doesn't actually tell you anything about the product beyond the impression that you will be viewed as cool and interesting to the opposite sex and your peer group if you use it.

This is why Pepsi and Coke cannot stop advertising for even a second. It is even more important for them than for other manufacturers in other product areas, as Coke and Pepsi are so ridiculously similar to one another. They must not only constantly reinforce their image to their current group of customers, they must continuously appeal to new ones. You and I may be very familiar with the products, but kids are being born all the time.

Also, reducing your advertising by half isn't nearly as cost-effective as one may think, as they would lose some (maybe a lot) of their volume discounts with the media they currently use. The 12x rate is much cheaper than the 6x rate in a magazine, and I must assume that the same goes for radio and TV. To reduce impact by 50% to save 30% isn't good math.

Also, any reduction must be matched by the competition, as a one-sided reduction in advertising would result in an increase in market share by the competitor that continues to saturate the media with their message.

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