This is the story of two
of the world's favourite drinks.
Both with one aim -
global domination.
Coke and Pepsi conquered the world.
There is no greater symbol
of globalisation than those
two fizzy drinks companies.
On board will be two specially
designed soft drink cans -
one from Coke, the other from Pepsi.
130 years of feuds and
fierce competition.
I think that Pepsi Challenge
just got in their head.
They got thinking that consumers
want sweet, we've got to be sweet,
and they panicked, they blinked.
But which one is your favourite?
In the red corner, it's the billion
dollar beverage that is Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola is now going to
be even better.
And in the blue corner,
nipping at the heels of the leader,
it's the younger upstart Pepsi.
Pepsi is the cola to beat.
So, take your seat ringside and get
ready for a fight with added fizz...
As a product,
it's just fizzy brown water.
..as Coke and Pepsi battle it out
to be crowned king of the colas.
You're not just buying
a fizzy drink,
you're buying a brand and a whole
lifestyle that comes with it.
Over 40 years ago,
Pepsi did something that
took the world by storm.
They introduced the Pepsi Challenge.
OK, now why don't you tell me
which one you chose?
Pepsi-Cola!
And in summer 2019,
they did it all over again.
We went all in with
the ultimate blind taste test
against the nation's
biggest-selling cola.
And we won.
The premise is simple -
take a sip and decide
your favourite.
It was this challenge
that in the 1970s
saw people in their thousands
choose Pepsi over Coke.
It was a gutsy move,
as it was all about the taste
and not about the brand.
But what exactly is in
the mysterious brown liquid?
Coca-Cola and Pepsi are 99.5%
water and sucrose.
The really cool part is when
you get to the 0.5%,
the very last little bit,
which is a whole mishmash of
very interesting chemicals.
Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi are fairly
heavy on the citrus flavours.
So, I'm going
to go with orange first.
The highly guarded
and very secret recipes
of both Coke and Pepsi contain
small concentrations of lemon oil,
nutmeg, coriander and cinnamon oil.
You don't want to go
overboard with this.
Otherwise, your Coke
tastes like Christmas.
So, now we're going to kick off with
the Pepsi flavouring.
All of the essential oils are the
same, with the exception of one,
and that one is this neroli,
which is based on,
essentially, a flower.
And what they replaced it
with instead
is this thing called petit grain.
Which is a citrus-flavoured
essential oil
derived from the bitter orange tree.
This is the main difference
between this and Coca-Cola.
This may well be the reason that
Pepsi has that more lemony taste.
The original Coke recipe
also contained cocaine,
and one other subtle difference
in the flavour combinations
is the addition of coca leaf
and vanilla.
What I'm going to do is
mix that up now.
The individual flavour
concentrations are added
to the sugar syrup
along with citric acid...
This is kind of the magic moment.
..and black caramel to give it
its distinctive colour.
So, that's the Pepsi syrup finished,
and when we compare it to the Coke,
they look very, very similar indeed.
So, what we need to do now is
we need to add carbonated water.
And then you'll have your drink.
It's kind of the moment of truth
when I actually get to try these
things, so I'm kind of excited.
So, that's interesting.
It's got a lot of that caramel
flavour going, quite a strong
caramel taste, even though it's not
as strong a colour as modern Coke.
I'm definitely getting
sort of vanilla-y taste
and the cinnamon in there.
I guess the proof's in the pudding
with the Pepsi,
so let's give this a go.
Ooh.
It's not as complicated, and I guess
has a simpler recipe,
so that would make sense.
The taste is a lot more...
..cleaner, I suppose. I think
I prefer the Coca-Cola.
HE CHUCKLES
Remember, when you are buying
a can of Coca-Cola,
only a few pence of that is
the fizzy liquid inside.
Most of it is the brand
you're buying.
Now, to this day, Coca-Cola spend
$6 billion a year
advertising its products.
It's worth remembering that
a lot of the genius moves,
particularly the marketing moves
by Coca-Cola and by Pepsi,
involved TONNES of money
being thrown at the problem.
Pepsi spends over $5.8 billion
themselves in advertising.
This is no small battle.
This is the cola wars, and it has
been going on for over 130 years.
North Carolina, 1898.
Innovative pharmacist Caleb Bradham
had invented a brown sugary drink
that he hoped would make him
a fortune.
Pepsi starts out as nothing more
than another imitator
of Coca-Cola, and there are
tonnes of imitators of Coca-Cola.
There were lots of these
kind of cola-like drinks
doing the rounds in
these drugstores,
promising absolutely everything -
whether it was headaches
or digestive problems.
So, Pepsi, that's named after
dyspepsia, indigestion.
After trademarking
the name Pepsi-Cola,
they were out of the traps
and on their way up.
But hard times arrived at
Pepsi-Cola's door
during World War I.
The high sugar price and
severe rationing of it
saw them eventually go bankrupt.
Coke, the brand leader,
was invented 12 years earlier
by another pharmacist,
John Pemberton,
and was receiving massive success.
The recipe was cocaine,
caffeine and sugar,
the big three things that really
gave you a jolt of energy.
And that was a product that
people really liked.
Coca-Cola passed through
the hands of several buyers,
eventually being bought by
an American business tycoon.
Asa Candler acquired
the company in 1891.
And in the early days,
one of his main objectives
was to put their logo on
almost everything.
It didn't matter. Any type of
advertising, they would engage it.
Asa Candler saw the future by using
not just a little advertising,
but mass advertising.
He poured, in 1902, I think,
over $100,000 in advertising,
which is huge. It's enormous.
It was all very well throwing money
into advertising, but Asa Candler
wanted to make sure Coke was
available to buy nationwide.
What Coca-Cola did really smartly
was it developed a franchise system
on which it sold this cola syrup
to bottlers all around the US.
This was really
revolutionary for its time,
so it quickly gained
nationwide listings.
It was unusual to have a drink
that you could find
around the entire US, and it looked
the same and it looked premium,
it looked quality.
And that was something
they really stood out on.
Many other copycat cola businesses
had tried and failed.
One by one, Coke beat its imitators.
Afra-Cola, Ameri-Cola,
Ala-Cola, Bulema-Cola,
Cafe-de-Ola, Carbo-Cola, Candy-Cola,
Cappa-Cola, Chera-Cola.
And I'm just through the Cs so far.
It was an endless
stream of imitators.
And everyone had different bottles
and they were trying
to look like Coke.
Two bottles of Coca-Cola.
Make sure it's Coca-Cola. All them
bottles look pretty much alike.
With Pepsi being bankrupt,
Coke didn't see them as a threat.
It would prove to be a huge mistake.
In 1931, after passing through
the hands of several investors,
Pepsi-Cola was finally bought by
ambitious businessman Charles Guth.
Pepsi was bought out of bankruptcy
in the '30s by a fellow
who ran soda fountains in New York
and wanted to compete with Coke
because they wouldn't give him
a discount on syrup.
Pepsi's moment in the sun
comes in the 1930s.
Following the Wall Street crash
and the Great Depression,
people are on their uppers.
They are looking at ways
to save money,
and Coca-Cola's not that cheap.
A little small bottle costs
a nickel - 5 cents.
And Pepsi-Cola realised this
was their opportunity.
What they would do is that they
would offer cola at great value.
So Pepsi offers double the amount
for your nickel.
Pepsi's radio jingle, Nickel Nickel,
became the first radio advertisement
to be broadcast coast-to-coast.
# Pepsi-Cola hits the spot
# 12oz, that's a lot
# Twice as much for a nickel, too
# Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you
# Nickel, nickel, nickel... #
Eventually, it would be
recorded in 55 languages,
and named one of the most effective
ads of the 20th century.
Coca-Cola had a real dilemma
when Pepsi-Cola came out with
this 12oz bottle
and promoted it with their jingle,
"Twice as much as a nickel, too."
Consumers were drinking it up
all over the place.
What was Coca-Cola going to do?
The gauntlet had been thrown down.
Pepsi were back
and they were fighting.
Coca-Cola weren't going to
take this lying down.
The cola wars had begun.
Pepsi was getting real,
and they took it to our streets
with the Pepsi Challenge.
Hidden away in the North West
of England is a Coca-Cola factory.
I usually get here for
7 o'clock, latest.
It's a very fast-paced place,
so this is probably the
calmest point of the day.
Operations director Alison Rance
has given us an all-access pass
to their Wakefield factory.
Do you usually let people
film inside?
No, we certainly don't.
It's very, very rare to let a
film crew into Coca-Cola Wakefield.
Why's that? Cos it's...
There's some elements that
are closely-guarded secrets.
Why are they so secretive?
Well, I suppose mainly
because of the secret formula,
how they make Coca-Cola.
What exactly is in that recipe?
I suppose Coca-Cola is simply
the Willy Wonka of soft drinks.
Are you ready, then?
Welcome to the biggest
soft drinks facility in Europe.
The Wakefield factory
was established in 1989,
and is the largest soft drinks plant
by volume in Europe.
They have nine manufacturing lines
that produce in excess
of 100 million cases every year,
and that's just this factory alone.
We've got just short of 500 people
on a 24/7 shift pattern.
We run 364 days of the year.
Our can lines will be able to
produce 6,000 cans per minute.
Our bottle lines will do
2,000 a minute.
So a total of about 8,000 cans
or bottles per minute,
every single minute,
every day of the week,
to make sure we can make a
billion litres of product a year.
Sorry, how much?
A billion.
A billion litres of product a year.
Takes a bit of getting
your head round that.
So what's the secret to making
this incredibly successful product?
So this is the syrup room.
Today, we're just
prepping some Diet Coke.
It's a 38,000-litre syrup prep.
That syrup prep will last us
approximately four hours.
The concentrate,
the water and the sweeteners
all get mixed together and blended.
If we were making Coke,
we'd have similar concentrate
with the secret recipe in it.
We'd then pipe in liquid sugar
from our sugar dissolving plant
and water, and make up the syrup
in the same fashion.
A mixed solution is then piped onto
the production line, carbonated
and dispensed into premade cans
and bottles at astonishing speed.
And then we close the container,
so that's either with
a seamed lid for a can,
or a cap on top of a bottle.
All of the massive amount
of product that's made
is stored in huge warehouse.
These yellow things that
you can see here are the cranes,
each named after one of
the engineers' family members.
Louise is my very dear wife.
Have we had any major breakdowns
of Louise?
Yes, we have. Yeah?
Louise has let me down a few times.
We have 28,000 pallets
that are stored in here.
One of our customers
will make an order,
the haulier then gets
the information that says that
Morrisons Wakefield need this load
for 18:00 on Wednesday.
So my team will press
a series of buttons
and it will send instruction
to the cranes to go to a location
and to pull a crane
to a drop-off point.
And it will travel along
the hard link,
through these doors into a location
where a forklift will pick it up
and load it onto a vehicle,
which will then be collected by
a haulier and dispatched.
The Wakefield plant is one of the
most sophisticated in the world,
but of course, when Coke was
still in its infancy,
getting its product to the customer
wasn't that easy.
EXPLOSIONS
SNARE DRUM PLAYS
As the 1940s dawned,
the world was at war,
and America's biggest
soft drink giants
had already been fighting it out
for decades.
In support of the war effort,
Pepsi changed their branding
to a patriotic red, white and blue,
with their logo appearing
on all their bottle tops.
Coke also had something up
their sleeves to make sure
they were still at the forefront
of everyone's minds.
Coca-Cola turns around
to the government and says,
"You can't ration us
"because we are a key item
for the American fighting man.
"We can't be rationed,
"in the same way you can't ration
bullets and fuel and...
"..and meat for the soldiers.
This is necessary."
And they won the argument.
So Coca-Cola was not rationed.
It was distributed all around
the world to American servicemen.
But physically getting Coke to
the troops was proving problematic.
It's very difficult to ship
Coca-Cola, a fizzy drink,
across the Atlantic when you've
got the U-boats trying to bomb
any boat crossing the Atlantic.
Future President Dwight D Eisenhower
came up with the perfect solution.
So Eisenhower says, "Well,
come and build a bottling plant."
So Coca-Cola builds a bottling plant
behind the front lines
in North Africa
so that the American troops
have a steady supply of Coca-Cola.
No-one thinks this is weird.
They think, "Of course!"
Because Coca-Cola is just as
important as ammunition and fuel.
Despite protests from Pepsi
and accusations of the army
creating a cola monopoly,
the bottling plants went ahead.
And of course, for the rest of
the war, Coca-Cola is associated
with the American liberation
of various different countries.
For Europeans who haven't had sugar
for years and years
because of rationing, it's very
exciting and it is indelibly linked
with that idea of liberation,
with cool Americans,
with democracy, with freedom.
And it, you know...
That, if anything,
is the foundation stone
of the myth that Coca-Cola
is America.
During the war, American servicemen
consumed 10 billion bottles
of Coca-Cola.
Coke's support of the war effort
was more than racking up sales.
It was the single greatest marketing
coup in the company's history.
Coke became an icon that
took on a life of its own.
Post-war left Pepsi trailing.
They had nothing to lose,
so they just had to innovate.
They trialled selling Pepsi in
steel cans instead of glass bottles.
They were also experimenting
with a host of different
yet catchy slogans.
# Pepsi-Cola hits the spot
# A big, big bottle
and it's got... #
And with the dawning of
the age of television,
the first Pepsi advert,
featuring a young James Dean's first
TV appearance, hit the screens.
# More bounce to the ounce
More bounce to the ounce. #
Buy Pepsi by the carton!
As the smaller brand,
Pepsi had to be much more nimble
and make risky decisions
to keep growing the business.
# Met you in a song
# Pull the other one
Sounds like a dream... #
Pepsi was the first,
in the late '60s,
to really see these baby boomers,
born after the Second World War,
you know,
and focus on youth in its
advertising. That was Pepsi.
Pepsi are going hard
for the youth market.
They have gone,
"Cool teenagers drink Pepsi,
"their fuddy-duddy parents
drink Coca-Cola."
Pepsi were about to coin a phrase
that would stay with them forever -
the Pepsi Generation.
Suddenly, they
discovered advertising
in a far sexier way
than Coca-Cola.
These adverts specifically
targeted the youth,
tapping into a previously
neglected market.
And it had caught Coke off guard.
Coke had to strike back hard.
What they came up with was
ground-breaking and memorable.
# I'd like to buy the world a home
# And furnish it with love
# Grow apple trees and honeybees
# And snow-white turtle doves... #
Hilltop is one of the
most famous ads of all time.
It simply involves a huge cast
of young people from
all over the world,
often kind of in
their national costumes,
assembled on a hilltop in Italy,
united by a bottle of Coca-Cola.
# I'd like to teach
the world to sing
# In perfect harmony... #
This song became
a cultural phenomenon.
I mean, people wanted to hear a song
from a commercial.
That doesn't happen very much.
And they reinforced the original,
"Coca-Cola is the real thing,"
is what's going to
bring us together.
# It's the real thing
# Coke, yeah
# What the world wants today
# Coca-Cola... #
It's so saccharine. I mean,
it's teach the world how to sing
with honeybees and apple trees.
I mean, it's... It's awful.
But it worked. It really worked.
It tapped into a latent desire,
particularly from Americans, that...
..that we could find world peace,
thanks to Coca-Cola.
By this time, the cola wars
were well and truly on
in advertising realms.
Pepsi's market share continued
to climb, and in 1975,
Pepsi shook up the industry
in a way no-one saw coming.
Coca-Cola is the
classic brand leader.
It's the one that
we're all taught about,
how you should position yourself
as the original,
as the only authentic choice
and not even acknowledge
any of your rivals.
Pepsi is the definitive
challenger brand, though.
You can't beat the brand leader
on its own terms,
you've got to find a way around it.
You've got to outflank it.
You've got to try and undermine
the brand leader.
So in the 1970s, as Pepsi
starts to rediscover its mojo
and it goes for the youth audience,
they do a big advertising campaign
which some senior executives
at Pepsi were very nervous about.
It was a very aggressive move,
to go out there on television
and explicitly say,
"Pepsi is better than Coca-Cola."
Whilst Coca-Cola
was delivering us ads
which were glossy, full of glamour,
Pepsi was getting real.
And they took it to our streets
with the Pepsi Challenge.
We're about to take
the Pepsi Challenge.
I have two bottles
of cola back here,
and you don't know which is which.
No, I don't.
We have never met before.
That's correct. OK.
Except at my sister's wedding.
LAUGHTER
But beside that, we have never met.
Well, the Pepsi Challenge
is fascinating.
Basically, the Pepsi company
decided to do taste tests in markets
around the country, and...
..and advertise the findings.
This is the taste. This is the test.
Pepsi versus Coke,
the Pepsi Challenge.
And all across America,
more people pick Pepsi,
time after time after time.
Pepsi-Cola!
# Oh, what a time... #
This campaign was so innovative,
it stripped away
90 years of brand loyalty
and took it back to the product.
This was actually a really
bold step from Pepsi,
because what it was saying is,
"We're setting the tone
of the conversation."
Which do you prefer?
I like this.
Tell me what you picked.
I like Pepsi! Now I know!
We've been drinking Coke
all this time!
Well, Pepsi tastes pretty good.
So it turns out a slight number
more people
like the sweeter taste
of Pepsi on a first sip.
So what was it that made
people choose Pepsi?
Rather than clever marketing, could
there be a different explanation?
The human tongue can detect
four basic flavours -
salt, sour, bitter and sweet.
Humans are naturally pre-programmed
to be drawn to sweet,
so if Pepsi is slightly sweeter,
it gets the edge.
So what we've got here
is a very diluted Coca-Cola.
This is literally some Coca-Cola
with water.
And the same amount of Pepsi
with the same amount of water.
And this chemical here is
something called DNSA,
and it's a test that we use
to show, essentially,
how much sugar is in stuff.
And what we're going to do is add
the same amount of this to both.
And we're going to leave that
for about ten minutes,
and then we should see
a colour change.
So we're starting off with
this very yellowy orange colour.
The samples are placed into
a water-bath for ten minutes.
So what we see when we look
very, very closely
is that the Pepsi, this one here,
is a darker colour
than the Coca-Cola.
Now, the difference is small,
and we know that's the case
because there is very little
difference in the sugar content.
But this would lend credit to the
fact that Pepsi has more sugar,
and that might well be a factor when
we consider the Pepsi Challenge.
So it's a brilliant
piece of marketing
because it takes the most important
attribute in the category,
which is taste, and it presents
a scientific test
that shows Pepsi coming out on top
every single time.
So that's fantastic for Pepsi.
All across this country,
people took the Pepsi Challenge
and Pepsi won, because...
# You know a winner
# When you taste one... #
Even though the difference
was minimal,
it was enough to tip the taste
scales in Pepsi's flavour.
Ads like this made it exciting.
It was brave, it was bold,
and some would say reckless.
But it paid off and brought millions
of new followers to Pepsi,
elevating it to a whole new level.
But it was quite a risky move
by Pepsi,
because Coke's the market leader
and you would presume by definition
that more people would prefer Coke.
But they didn't.
Coca-Cola would be shaken enough
to question its entire product.
And it caused immense consternation
back in headquarters in Atlanta,
because it was a direct challenge
to the quality of the product.
The cola wars have been raging
for the last 130 years.
The battle between Coke and Pepsi
is a real heavyweight one -
slugging it out,
ducking and diving now for decades.
But it's been hard for Pepsi,
who are considered the underdog
of this double act.
One of the perennial problems
that Pepsi faces
is that it can be seen
as a second-best option.
So sometimes we see it as
something we don't ask for
but we're just given when there's
no Coca-Cola available,
and perhaps with an apology
at the same time.
So throughout their
advertising history,
Pepsi has tried to address that.
What are you having, folks?
A large pepperoni pizza.
And a Pepsi, please.
In the '90s, they did that
with an angelic little girl.
She's given a Coke
and then she's transformed
into this somewhat scary Mafioso
boss who makes it very clear
that she really, really, really
does want a Pepsi.
MENACING MALE VOICE: Come here.
I want you to listen very carefully
to what I'm about to tell you.
We both know I ordered a Pepsi-Cola,
and now you've insulted me
and my entire family
by offering me this.
They're a little bit more
of a cheeky upstart,
so they like to use that
to lighten the mood,
whereas a lot of Coke's best
advertising has been perhaps
more soulful and traditional and
heart-warming in its tone of voice.
# So I try... #
It wasn't just little girls
on the payroll.
To capture our attention
and grab sales from Coke,
Pepsi drafted in some of
the biggest names in pop,
like this ad featuring David Bowie
and Tina Turner.
# Now I know the choice is mine... #
And it really takes off
in the 1980s, when it hires -
at the most outrageous sum of money,
$5 million -
the services of Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson's involvement
positioned Pepsi as the cola
for the new generation, and
a big budget ad was commissioned.
The story goes, he's shown
the storyboard of the advert,
and he goes,
"I don't like the advert.
"You show my face too much."
It's like, "What?!
"We've spent $5 million hiring
the services of Michael Jackson,
"and he's turning around saying
he doesn't want his face
"involved in the advert?"
This is an absolute disaster.
When, actually, it is supposedly
Michael Jackson himself
who comes up with the idea that,
"Don't show my face at the start.
"Show the little symbols of
Michael Jackson -
"my silvery glove, my hat,
my dance moves,
"and only at the end do I turn
around and you see my face."
# You're the Pepsi generation
# Guzzle down and
# Taste the thrill of the day... #
Ultimately, Pepsi is associated
with youth and with pop culture,
in a way that Coke
can't quite match.
But sometimes these celebrity
endorsements don't always work -
and in 2017, a Pepsi ad made
headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The Kendall Jenner commercial
was a rare mistake
in the Pepsi advertising story.
But this one went disastrously wrong
because they forgot to
take into account the context.
# We are the lions
We are the chosen... #
This well intended ad resulted
in a massive negative backlash.
The advert sees Kendall
whipping off a disguise
and joining a crowd of protesters.
She later offers
a policeman a Pepsi,
which brings the crowd to cheers.
People were angry - as they felt
like Pepsi were being exploitative
and undermining the protests of
the Black Lives Matter movement
happening in America at the time
the ad was launched.
It also didn't look at
religious sensitivities.
You can see that there's Muslim
women in there, wearing the hijab,
and they're hugging males, and that
could lead to a backlash too.
The online reaction was huge.
The hashtag #BoycottPepsi
was trending worldwide.
And people in their droves
were telling others not to buy
any of their products
until the ad was pulled.
On the surface, the intentions were
good, so it was a desire to show
that the world is divided,
and "Wouldn't it all be better
"if we came together and celebrate
the things that we have in common?"
So, in a funny way, it's not that
different from the Coca-Cola ad
set on a mountaintop in the 1970s
that we all celebrate
as a masterpiece of marketing.
Pepsi apologised
and withdrew the ad -
but nevertheless, it was still
a huge marketing disaster for them.
But even when it comes to marketing
disasters, Coke comes out on top.
Back in the '80s, it suffered
a massive marketing fail,
triggered by the original
Pepsi Challenge.
They were obsessed with
the taste test.
They got thinking that consumers
want sweet, "We've got to be sweet."
And they panicked, they blinked.
And that's where New Coke came in.
On April 23, 1985,
Coca-Cola did the unthinkable.
The best soft drink, Coca-Cola,
is now going to be even better.
Simply stated,
we have a new formula for Coke.
They have done tens of thousands
of blind taste testings,
and people say, "Yes," they prefer
New Coke versus original Coke.
And the bosses of Coca-Cola
are super confident
that this is a better drink.
Changing the closely guarded
secret formula of Coke's recipe
was arguably the single biggest
revolution in the company's history.
Well, New Coke is just
fascinating to me.
I mean, it's an instance
in which the Coca-Cola company
essentially went against a century
of its own marketing
and advertising, its own success
in making Coca-Cola something
above and beyond just a soft drink.
There was no reverence for
the secret formula.
The key thing about New Coke
was that it kind of looked
very similar, in terms of branding
and packaging.
It was called New Coke.
But the taste was
distinctly different.
I mean, they really had changed
that taste,
and it did taste more like Pepsi,
which was notably sort of sweeter.
The real disaster, I think - if you
were going to change the taste and
the formula of Coca-Cola, what were
you going to do with the old Coke?
And they decided to stop selling it.
And that is what provoked
this consumer rebellion.
They paid the price
for their foolishness.
People were outraged that they
couldn't buy the original,
all-American Coke any more.
Americans took to the streets
to protest.
Why are you upset about it?
My oldest daughter is 22.
Her first word was "Coke".
Her second word was "Mommy".
They felt betrayed.
How could you change something -
especially something
you said was the best?
You said you would never change it,
and you changed it.
I'm a true Coke fan.
I hate the New Coke.
I'll drink Coke till the day I die.
And I haven't bought any Coke
since they got this new stuff out.
It all goes horribly,
horribly wrong.
People were furious.
A lot weren't even
Coca-Cola drinkers.
They were just ordinary Americans
who thought something sacred
had been tampered with.
New Coke is now a byword for
all kinds of marketing disasters.
The great truth about both Pepsi
and Coca-Cola is that
it's not just about the liquid.
Of course the product is important,
but those liquids
represent our bigger concepts,
like freedom and youthfulness
and rebellion and originality and
tradition, and all those big things.
And their mistake was to not realise
the bigger emotional issues
about changing that formula.
People believe in the brand
and changing something like that,
it's like "New God".
You can't do that.
People get really upset.
When they don't make it and then
prohibit me from getting it
by keeping the secret formula,
then that's not American.
Pepsi quickly capitalised
on the backlash.
New Coke is about to
roll out internationally,
and we at Pepsi couldn't be happier.
By bringing out
tongue-in-cheek adverts,
Pepsi were really enjoying
the demise of New Coke.
In one Pepsi ad, a young girl upset
about New Coke asks,
"What were Coke thinking?"
Can somebody out there tell me
why Coke did it?
Why they changed?
First, they said
they were the real thing,
then they said they were it.
Then - kablooey - they changed.
Pepsi leapt onto that. They probably
couldn't believe their luck.
And they created a campaign that,
on the face of it,
was full of concern for these poor
Coke drinkers who'd been perhaps
let down, and they had a young lady
asking, "Why would Coke do this?",
and expressing her deep sadness
about this.
Mmm.
Now I know why.
PepsiCo hoped that Coke fans
would abandon the drink,
just like the girl
in the commercial.
Due to the outrage, after only
three months, Coca-Cola backtracked.
General Hospital will continue
in a moment.
An ABC News Brief...
The old taste of Coca-Cola
is coming back.
Within the next several weeks,
the original taste,
which many people in the country
apparently missed,
will be available again.
It will be called Coca-Cola Classic.
And the world took a deep
sigh of relief.
But what's remarkable to me is
that the Pepsi generation actually
responded well to Coke Classic,
and I can't explain it.
Within the year, Coke Classic was
outselling Pepsi, Diet, everything.
It was back on top.
Coca-Cola learned touching
the secret formula,
the real thing, is dangerous.
It's really dangerous.
My favourite line about New Coke
came from Don Keough,
who was the long-time Coke
executive, and he said,
"Some people think that we didn't
know what we were doing, and
"some people think it was actually
a deliberate stroke of genius."
He said, "The truth is we're not
that dumb and not that smart."
So what's the future
for our battling brands as
they embrace technology in targeting
health-conscious millennials?
This dispenser allows us
to not only change the flavours,
but it allows the trainer and
the athlete to change the nutrients.
I can toggle the potassium,
magnesium, sodium and carbohydrates.
Over the years, a new appetite
for health has emerged,
and both the Coca-Cola company
and PepsiCo have had to keep on top
of this growing trend.
Diet Pepsi had been on the market
since the '60s,
but with health now being
at the forefront of people's minds,
Pepsi Max became their new
diet leader.
They understand their consumer
and they respond.
They have noticed the shift
in consumption behaviour.
We want less sugar,
we want less caffeine,
and they're making products
to suit our needs.
This is a huge multi,
multi-million industry,
and taking the sugar out
and maintaining that flavour -
so the likes of Pepsi Max,
Coca-Cola Zero Sugar -
I mean, these formulations,
this is what the industry is about,
giving people that similar flavour
but with less sugar,
using sweetener alternatives.
Coca-Cola had massive success with
their diet version back in the '80s.
I'm here for my 11.30 appointment.
Hi, I'm here for my 11.30. 11.30.
Within two years of the launch,
Diet Coke had become the top
low-calorie drink in the world.
MUSIC: I Just Wanna Make Love To You
by Etta James
But there's one other interesting
element about that advert.
It wasn't just trying
to push Diet Coke.
It was also trying to bring forward
the consumption time of the product.
And they put forward this
Diet Coke break at 11am,
and this was a way of trying
to bring forward the time
when people would drink soft drinks
to much earlier than it
actually was in practice.
And it's had a remarkable success.
In our new health-conscious world,
the demand for consumer choice
is growing,
so Coke has been looking into
new ways in a bid to offer
an option to everyone.
This is the Coca-Cola
Freestyle Center,
where we create and innovate
fountain dispensing equipment.
If they're going to
stay on top of their game,
the solution will be found here.
Typically, we don't allow
filming and cameras,
but today's an exception.
And what are all these labs?
Well, they're different.
Some of them are magic, and I can't
tell you what's going on in them.
Come on in.
The company is pumping a lot of time
and effort into
next-generation vending machines.
We took from the medical field
highly precise pumps that
pump medicine, and we transferred it
to the beverage world.
So those pumps enable us to
super-highly concentrate the syrups
and ingredients, and we're able
to add all of that choice.
So, for instance, in this dispenser,
there are 200 brand choices
for the consumer.
So this is the Freestyle app,
and it enables me to toggle
the level of ingredients.
I can walk up to the machine
and it recognises me.
And in my case, it would say,
"Hi, Chris. Last time you were here,
here's what you had.
"Do you want that again?
Do you want to try something new?"
Given there's 200 choices
and that I can mix and match those
with different percentages,
it's limitless, really.
It's all very well adding
more variations of their drinks
to their rosters,
but with the landscape
changing for consumer demands,
both brands have to think bigger.
The real challenge facing both
Pepsi and Coca-Cola is that
people just do not drink as many
fizzy drinks as they used to.
The peak year for consumption of
fizzy drinks in America was 1998,
when the average American drank
an astonishing 53 gallons -
which is the equivalent of 723 cans,
per person, each year.
That's fallen to the equivalent
of 540 cans a year -
it's an awful lot, but that is
a really, really big drop
if you are a manufacturer
of fizzy drinks.
And Pepsi have cleverly
addressed this by diversifying
really substantially.
So PepsiCo now, as a company,
only a quarter of its sales
come from fizzy drinks.
A lot of it comes from snacks -
Frito-Lay, Walkers Crisps in the UK.
So Pepsi have got an eye
on the future.
Coke's big strategy now is that
it's a total beverage company,
and it wants to have a presence
in every soft drinks category
you'll find in a supermarket.
So bottled water, probiotics,
even dairy alternatives,
sports drinks.
This dispenser allows us
to not only change the flavours,
but it allows the trainer and
the athlete to change the nutrients.
I can toggle the potassium,
magnesium, sodium and carbohydrates.
There is one development
in the wellness department that
Coca-Cola are keeping quiet about,
and it could be quite controversial.
A story that we've been
talking about -
Aurora Cannabis is leading
pot stocks higher today.
That's because of a BNN Bloomberg
report that Coca-Cola
is in serious talks with Aurora to
develop cannabis-infused beverages.
Coca-Cola, like a lot of other
big brands,
are experimenting with CBD -
often denying that, perhaps.
CBD is a component in cannabis.
THC is what kind of gives you
the hallucinogenic effect of
cannabis, and CBD itself is actually
a much healthier component of it.
It's used to treat
really severe epilepsies.
There's some research
into lung cancer.
There's a wide range of conditions
that CBD, excitingly,
may have a positive impact for.
There's already been
some discussions that
Coca-Cola are going to be putting
CBD into some of their products.
So we've gone full circle.
Coca-Cola started as
a medicinal product,
and here we are in 2019 and they're
trying to make it medicinal again
using the latest wonder drug -
cannabis.
So, with over 130 years of
ups and downs,
major successes and pitiful fails,
it's 2019 and Pepsi and Coke
are still standing like giants.
So where do our two sugar water
rivals go from here?
The products are going to change.
The channels and media
are going to change.
The different sub-brands
might change.
But the Cola Wars, no doubt,
are going to go on for
a very long time to come.
What they were very clever at
is you're not just buying
a fizzy drink - you're buying
a brand and a whole lifestyle
that comes with it.
Both brands are not just
selling a product.
They're selling a feeling.
And they will continue to market
this feeling and sell it
in absolute bucketloads.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media
