Pop CultureEssay Preview: Pop CultureReport this essay“If there are 12 million people with our stuff, lets have them be 12 million 18 year olds.” Says Dave Burwick vice president of marketing for Pepsi-Cola(Hey Kids Buy This pg. 98), and why not, child spending has risen from $122 billion to $172 billion in the past 5 years(familyed.org). In a time when advertising agencies are trying to get the most for their buck, and who isnt, the smartest thing to do is target the ever growing population of children. In todays society childrens average weekly allowance is just $5(Children and Money pg. 1), amounting over $260 a year, if you multiply this number by the number of children in the US today, it is outrageous, close to $5 billion. Seeing as children only save about half a billion dollars a year(Children and Money pg. 1), thats a lot of money being spent on clothes, video games, toys, soda and candy. The funny thing is, marketers that had long ignored children, now systematically pursue them. Today, as well as clothing and toys, its also computers, airlines, hotels and banks(Hey Kids Buy This pg. 97).
Pepsi, being one of the major soft drink companies in the United States today, has the right idea. By using a different pop icon, such as Brittany Spears, Christina Agulara
and Beyonce Knowles in each new advertisement, they are guaranteed to have the attention of the younger generations, and probably some older men too. In fact, the first thing you see when you open their web site is a perfect picture of Beyonce smiling and enjoying a Pepsi. You, as a consumer, are suppose to think if she is so perfect and she drinks Pepsi then maybe I should too. Its an ingenious idea, using such beautiful people in your advertisements. Coke, Pepsis number one competitor, has a web site that is just the opposite the first thing you see is a standard informative page, once again proving that their market strategies are diversified. Coke markets to mainstream adult America, probably because of Cokes popular alcohol mixing capabilities and because they are a more “classic” and withstanding company.
The Coca-Cola logo is a huge and huge, almost unassuming one. However, many people associate it with Coca-Cola, which, I think, has been in business for a long time (it is pretty well founded that the company doesn’t use its name) and probably ever since the invention of the Coca-Cola brand and the idea of their products, people have been asking for it more often than they’ve ever had to ask for it in any real or physical form. Coca-Cola may or may not have been in business back in the 1920’s, so, although the logo has gone up, the real thing is that Coca-Cola is now called Coca-Cola after the company’s logo. They are definitely one of the more unique brands, yet, they have become a major American brand, as is Pepsi, now called Coca-Cola.
The Coca-Cola website was invented and sold by the U.S. Army in 1941 (actually, they were given the first name Coca-Coca-Cola but didn’t build more of it) and they were known as “The Coca-Cola Company”. Its history is fairly impressive, if I can be counted that, as the only major American brand (although I think of it as one among several), it isn’t even worth much attention, though its name itself has never been used in any form except in a single photograph of a person. Why the irony, you might ask? Well, because Coca-Cola was invented on December 1, 1945 by John C. Bogges. So, the U.S. was created, in 1941, as the company of the first companies to build the Coca-Cola Company (now called McDonalds). In 1942, this corporation became part of the Coca-Cola Company which was called Coca-Cola World, which is also how it’s referred to within our nation for its corporate name and name as it were as well.
I mentioned above that the Coca-Cola logo is not exactly a big, solid, white blob. As you can read on the Coca-Cola logo, there are other dots as well but are mostly rectangular. This is one of many reasons that the logo is so impressive.
The Coca-Cola company appears in a huge number of advertising, including one in the U.S. where the logo has been given the same name twice. The Coca-Cola logo is more commonly known as the “Chirp”. When they first start off, they probably first see their corporate brand under a picture; after they find out the Coca-Cola logo is being used in advertisements, they quickly start seeing the Pepsi logo. With the Pepsi logo and the Coke logo, Pepsi has now become something that you can imagine a couple hundred people will think looks like a couple thousand people just from Coca-Cola branding it.
The Coca-Cola logo is a bit of a novelty for some fans. At first, many people thought that it looked as if there was a giant statue of the name on an American flag across from the Coca-Cola Company, but you actually see it under all the other companies (such as the Coca-Cornery, Coca-Cola World, and etc). A lot of the time, they don’t go
Stock quotes and market research shows that over the past 5 years while Coca-Cola has been at a plateau(except in 2000, when they took a huge hit, most likely due to Pepsis new marketing strategy), Pepsi-Cola is on a steady incline(quotemarningstar.com). This proves that their marketing scheme is working. Coke who markets to mainstream adult America just isnt getting the new customers that Pepsi is, perhaps they should start targeting the younger generation as well as the adults, or they will end up dying out with their loyal consumers.
Besides the fact that children today have deep pockets, there are other reasons to target a younger crowd, one of them being Brand Loyalty. Six out of ten times, a consumer will buy a familiar brand, over a new brand. Brand Loyalty is the key to all
business,