Every marketer knows the saga behind the Coke and Pepsi branding war. When trying to build branding, it is helpful to learn from the big companies such as Coke and Pepsi. These two seemingly identical products have made branding into a science, each building a loyal following that adamantly refuses to drink the competitor’s beverage.
Basically the Taste Tests of Coke vs. Pepsi are all inconclusive as in double-blind tests, people are equally split about which tastes better (even those who claim to like one better than the other are just as likely to choose their stated less-favored brand). But thanks to some fancy brain imagery scans, it seems Coke may come out ahead in one area: deep cognitive branding.
You got to see it to believe it - neurological brain scans reveal what the participants couldn’t, that Coke engaged more emotional memory centers of the brain than Pepsi does. What does this suggest about branding? Basically that Coke has been more successful in linking its brand with strong memories and emotions than Pepsi.
Somehow, Coke has succeed where Pepsi has failed: in cognitively encoding nostalgia in the human brain. This research suggests that branding is about developing deep emotional bonds with the public, and associating these emotional bonds with the enjoyment of the product itself.
So part of a customized marketing solution is comparing and contrasting the new line with competitors, much like Coke and Pepsi, which are, all things considered, identical products.