Coke vs. Pepsi: who ya got?

Most consumers have a pretty opinionated answer to that question, and it’s a big reason why the ‘Cola Wars’ have stayed relevant for decades. The thing is, after years of seeing Pepsi battle Coke and Coke strike back at Pepsi, there was one thing no one had ever seen: a truce.

We knew soda drinkers would lose their minds when they saw these two founders together, so we had a social media War Room in place and ready to engage in real-time. As a result, Pepsi’s Super Bowl chatter was 23x more than Coke’s.

In February, 2019, the Super Bowl was hosted in Atlanta, Georgia¬¬—the birthplace and home of Coca-Cola. As the official sponsor of the game, Pepsi saw this as an opportunity to win the ‘Cola Wars’ and have some fun with its biggest competitor. The brief was simple: show up on Coke’s home turf with a ground-up creative idea that would steal the spotlight during the biggest media spectacle of the year.

After decades of ‘Cola Wars’ battles, Pepsi decided to declare a truce with Coca-Cola (whether they liked it or not).

Coke had just launched their new #TogetherIsBeautiful campaign, so we took that as an invitation to stop by. We built a life-sized statue of Pepsi founder, Caleb Bradham, and delivered it to the World of Coca-Cola where it was going to be placed in a symbolic “cheers” with Coke founder, John Pemberton.

Publicly, Coke greeted us with a smile. Privately, they kicked us out. Lucky for us, we swung by with Caleb earlier that day and had the photo to prove it. Pepsi tweeted a pic of the monumental meeting and declared a 24-hour #ColaTruce as a thank you to Coke, and the city of Atlanta, for hosting the Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl.

“The biggest rivalry in Atlanta on Super Bowl weekend has nothing to do with football. It’s the soft drink showdown: Coke vs. Pepsi.” — CNN

Expectations were high for what might happen with the Super Bowl ‘Cola Wars’ in Coke’s hometown. Factoring in the usual cacophony of brand noise that this spectacle attracts, the pressure was on to do something that caught the attention of both the media and soda drinkers alike.

Pepsi strategically (and unexpectedly) took the high road by declaring a truce—literally putting the brand on equal footing with their competitor. Once we had the photo of the two founders together, we shared it with media organizations and on Twitter, declaring a 24-hour #ColaTruce as a thank you to Coke for hosting the game.

Knowing we couldn’t permit the space and that Coke might not like the surprise, we needed to be smart with the design, build and delivery of our Caleb statue. He needed to look legitimate when placed across from Coke’s Pemberton, but he also needed to be lighter and more maneuverable than his bronze counterpart.

To achieve this, Caleb was laser cut out of foam, then underwent a clay sculpting phase where crucial detail was added. From there he was hard-coated, hand-painted and secured to a 180-lbs base. The result was a statue indistinguishable from real bronze at a fraction of the cost and weight.

Upon delivery, our photographer was in place to capture this unprecedented meeting. By the time Coke kicked us out, we had the photo and had already begun contacting the media. Simultaneously, Pepsi tweeted the image and our social war room began engaging consumers in real-time.

“Pepsi is pouring it on in Coke’s hometown.” — The New York Times

Pepsi’s strategic decision to play nice with Coke was a massive success.

The media loved it: #ColaTruce garnered over 690 million earned media impressions with coverage that spanned CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, Food & Wine, ESPN, Ad Age and many others.

The people loved it: #ColaTruce officially trended on Twitter, achieved significant social engagement for the brand (28,000+ tweets) and earned more than 1,000,000 organic social impressions.

The deciding victory: Pepsi Social Media Chatter was 23X Coke’s and the Pepsi brand scored #1 Share of Voice for Super Bowl (source: Cision Measuring Tools).

Or, in the words of @lfeOshun: “Pepsi dropkicked Coca Cola right in its own backyard.”