Cola Vs. Pepsi – Facebook Presence Who Wins?

What Makes Them Successful?

By: Tasha Ramdehall

One of the first platforms that was used by businesses to connect with their customers is Facebook. With the amount of people that used Facebook when it first came around and the amount of people that are still currently using, there is a huge amount of people that they can reach. This platform gives their customers and potential investors a way to look into the recent activities that the companies take part in. It also give them a way of communicating with their customers and others. While it might not be as used as before, both Coca- Cola and Pepsi, have a fair presence on this platform.

The first brand that we will investigate is Coca-Cola. According to their page the most recent post was made in July 17^th 2018.  The post was about the “Unlock your Summer” promo that Coca – Cola was doing. It was a promotional video that talked about how customers could unlock summer playlists with their purchase of Coca – Cola. Their next post was a paid sponsorship post. Coca- Cola is a world wide sponsor of the Olympics. Again the post uses a promotional video that implies that one way to watch the Olympics is to stock up on the icy cold goodness of Coca-Cola. The third one post they have on Facebook is on Dec 31^st 2017. This post is centered on stocking up on your soft drinks before you begin your New Years Eve celebration. One other interesting post is the one that they posted in commemoration of Canada turning 150. Again this was this post featured a video which showed the sound track they had for there Canadian Playlist on their “Unlock the Summer” campaign. What is noticeable is that there they use a lot of videos in their posts and most of their posts are centered around marketing their products for events that their products could be used. It is was either that or promotional videos or information for events like “Unlock your Summer” event.

The second brand we take a look at is Pepsi. The most recent post that is on their Facebook page is dated July 2^nd 2018. This post deals with a promotional event that Pepsi had going on over the summer. This was a contest where the people were offered a trip for 2 for anywhere in North America. The second post there is dated June 18^th 2018 where, again there was a contest (with link) where the winner could win $10,000. The next post on June 11^th also follows the same pattern. This time the contest was for movie tickets. The next post are practically the same thing. One thing that differs is the what event the contest is linked too. Sometimes it football other times it’s a long weekend getaway. They seem to use their Facebook only for promotional information specific to the contests or giveaways that are happening. Most of the posts are using videos which give out the promotion’s information. One thing that is interesting is that they use both videos and pictures the same way coke does but they seem to emphasize mostly on their use of videos rather then pictures. The one thing that they recently seem to posting a lot about is their partnership with the NFL.

For Pepsi, recently the most successful posts is this one:

              The above post is where Pepsi released a new flavour in Canada. This one was fairly recent, dated June 7^th2018 with over 2000 likes. The other ones had only seemed to reach around 500 – 600 likes. This one also seems to have the most comments. When looking into their posts, its seems like this is one of the only ones that have something to with the product itself, not with any contests or promotion event. That could be the reason that this post attracted so many likes.

For Coca-Cola the most successful post is as follows:

This post was made as a small promotional video which is meant to tap in to the funny and something as to which their customers can connect with. This particular post was one of the recent ones which got 663 likes compared to the others which were around 500 or less. Through the video, they tried to associate going on a first date or a first meeting to sharing a nice cold coke with said person. In my opinion, one of the reasons that this post was so successful, was because it was one of the easiest for people to connect to.

What it seems like here is the winner is Pepsi when it comes to getting their customers attention.