How the Pepsi Challenge Describes Our Politics Today

Branding in the '80s and How it Describes Where We Are.

Back in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s there was this marketing gimmick called “The Pepsi Challenge.” It was conducted through local Pepsi distributors and done in malls, sporting events, any place where a lot of people congregated. The concept was fairly simple. A person would take a sip of cola from one glass, then a sip from another and tell the person running it which they preferred. One of the colas was Pepsi, one was Coke. The image they were trying to convey was that in a blind taste test, people would prefer Pepsi and the only thing holding them back was people’s preconceived biases towards Coke as the market leader.

As a marketing gimmick, it was a huge success for basically three very different reasons:

1. Many takers of the challenge thought the premise was to guess which one was actually Pepsi. In fact, when conducting the trial, whether Pepsi or Coke were tasted first were hardly random. They would almost always flip the order from person to person, which made it easy for those standing in line to know which one was likely Pepsi. This made the challenge less “blind” as a taste test (while maintaining the image of one) but really, really simple if you were trying to guess which was Pepsi.

2. As Malcolm Gladwell noted in his book “Blink,” when testing just a sip of something, there’s a human bias towards the sweeter of the two. Pepsi’s formula was changed in the 1970’s to include much more sugar. The sweet taste and increase in market share over the early 1980s led Coca-cola, one of the world’s most iconic brands, to change their formula (by adding more sugar also) to much fanfare, in what is considered one of the biggest marketing mistakes in business history.

3. The whole purpose of the Pepsi Challenge to begin with had nothing to do with whether individual users liked Pepsi or Coke more. The two pronged purpose of the Pepsi challenge was to a) put Pepsi on the same level in the mind of the public with Coke in the soda world and b) take market share away from smaller brands like RC Cola and more regional soda companies. It worked so well that not only did RC languish by the end of the decade, but there was a period in the 1980s when Pepsi surpassed Coke, something people thought unthinkable.¹ ²

The Cola Wars had begun. But there was another reason I’m talking about fifty year old advertising gimmicks today. Its a change that happened in the 1980s that we are still experiencing, and helps explain what we are seeing in our politics. In short, the story is about brand loyalty.

What Really Happened in the 1980s?

The 1970s and in particular the 1980s was a transition period, when more locally focused media and advertising shifted to more national based. The main instigator of this societal change was television (and in the 1980s, national cable television programming). But the thing was there were very few truly national BRANDS. Different brands had different appeals in different areas of the country, and to some extent you can still see some vestigial versions of this. However, if there is one thing that defined the 1980s, it was that brands really came to matter. Levis. Jordache. McDonalds. Burger King. Nike. Reebok. As people moved about the country and saw ads placed on television and in product placements within shows, they gravitated to the familiar brands they knew. National marketing on nightly television shows became huge and companies became to be closely associated with how much people liked their commericials. The more popular and national your brand identity was, the more likely your success. I mean, think about these commercials.

Oh I know, Gen X. I’m one too. “We don’t follow brands.” Bullshit.³ We were so easily marketed to we bought clothes just because it had a Pepsi or Coke logo on it. By high school half our clothes were beer t-shirts and Spuds McKenzie. OUR branding was based on THEIR branding. Brand identity is a very tough nut to crack; once you are associated with a brand, much like the way you can associate yourself with a sports team or personal attribute, it is very difficult to change that. So, for many of those trying the Pepsi challenge and making a choice in the 1980s, many of those people today still adhere to which they preferred back then. That’s why Pepsi’s marketing of “The Choice of a New Generation” was geared specifically toward young people, and Coke’s was more a status quo campaign with “Coke is it!” Or “The Real Thing!”.

So what does this have to do about politics you may ask? I’m getting to that.

The 1980s Republicanism

It’s hard for kids today to envision what politics was actually like 50 years ago. Talk to some who think they know and they view it through the prism of politics today. That’s not right. In the 1970s and ‘80s, politics was still very local, regional and ideologically diverse. Yes, the Democrats had the southern “Dixiecrat” caucus full of racists. They also had northeastern academic liberals, union liberals, farmer liberals, military liberals and more. It wasn’t as polarized. Republicans too. People forget that in 1980 TWO Republicans ran for President, Ronald Reagan and liberal Republican John Anderson; Reagan’s win relatively crushed the more liberal wing of his party, but most of those elected still cared more about regional issues than national ones, since the local ones meant you got re-elected. But Republicans had a broad coalition too. What “Republican” or “Democrat” meant in Oregon was very different from what it meant in North Carolina. These perceptions were still regional. In the 1980s, this changed in a very big way, and those labels became nationally recognized now. The party branding in politics had begun.

By 1984, they’d win every state but Minnesota, because of a growing Republican BRAND. That brand was founded on strong military (it was the Cold War), tax cuts and trickle down economics, traditional religion and support for religious institutions, a strong sense of nationalism, and states rights. It also was strongly pro-life and pro-police, anti-crime and was actually supportive of immigration (so long as it improved the economy and featured refugees fleeing tyranny). That was the GOP BRAND. Many Baby Boomers, tired of the stagnancy and malaise of the 1970s latched onto that brand when the 1980s proved it to be a huge success. They may not have agreed with every one of the planks in the platform, but enough of them. Over time, those planks actually DO become supported, because its part of the BRAND. Any disagreement with those positions exposes people as non-believers and antagonists—they’re not true believers in the GOP brand. It becomes part of their fundamental belief system, their core principles.

When Clinton, that pot smoking, philandering, sketchy business southerner hippie from Arkansas, won in 1992, the Republican Brand went apeshit. Here was a guy who contradicted everything within the Republican Brand ID. They reconsituted the brand around Newt Gingrich, doubling down on it but including a more malicious tone. The Cold War was over so they ditched that part of the platform, but doubled down on pretty much all the rest. And this has been the modus operendi since then; when they win, they use it as a mandate, when they lose they double down on the brand and build a somewhat aura of a cult like devotion and following. In addition, more national money flowed into politics, and cultivated the national brand IDs even more. No longer was it one candidate running against another in a district or state, it was a slate of candidates running together for the same principles. Coordinated campaigning. The rise of PACs. Dark Money. It all bundled the issues for the parties into neat, easily identifiable and marketable product. The result? There is now little variation between candidates within either party, particularly around major issues in the platform; in addition, there are far fewer competitive districts in the country, as they are conforming to the brand ID of the parties, and regional candidates underperform..

When Trump took over the Republican Party, not only was it because he himself was a product of the original 1980s Republicanism that started the whole Brand ID for the GOP, but he herded everyone to fall in line with the BRAND again. If there'sone thing Trump really understands well, it's branding. After Obama, people weren’t quite sure what the GOP brand was anymore, much less where it would go; they’d staked the last 8 years on being just “anti-Obama” and had nothing but an empty shell of everything else. The W years now looked horrible and were disdained, candidates wanted to distance themselves as far away from that debacle as possible. Trump was as far as you could get. He built a new brand ID of the party from the ashes of the 1980s Republican vision (and by that I mean, completely antiquated vision). Dissenters were kicked out, only praise for Trump allowed. The Reagan Brand morphed to the Gingrich Brand, morphed to the Tea Party Brand, morphed now to the Trump brand. Its the same people, same party and very little change in the brand at all. Like I said, brand ID is very tough to break.

Sure, those that had their “Come-to Jesus” moments and became never Trumpers broke with the brand— good for them, that’s very hard if not always possible to do. They see the light of day outside of Conservatism, Inc. now and realize how they were along for the ride for so long. But many don’t. They are still die hard Pepsi drinkers of the GOP and nothing you say or do will make them try Coke lest their lives depended on it, and even then they’d spit it out. It doesn’t matter how good Coke is, how it may be the only drink available or how corrupt a Pepsi conglomerate may be (note to Pepsi, I don’t mean this, just using as an example hypothetical—don’t want to be sued you know), they will ONLY drink Pepsi. That’s brand loyalty.

I don’t think that brand identity is anything you can actually break with the Boomers and Gen Xers out there. They’d adhered to it for far too long. The Democratic brand is still pretty weak among them by comparison, but far more diverse and fulfilling; Democrats could have a generational coalition if they can build a solid enough brand ID without the baggage, but therein lies the rub.

Until that happens, every election is likely to be a close one. If there is one thing that gives me hope for the future, it’s the idea that those growing up in Gen Z and after are coming of age when the choices couldn’t be any clearer. A major point of focus is that the media in which we receive and process information is also changing drastically, from television (favored by Boomers and Gen X) to the internet and siloed social media (favored by Millenials and Gen Z). As those forms of media mature and evolve, we should see the Brand IDs of the new politics evolve with them. And that brand ID will be tough to change for a long time.

The choice of a new generation indeed.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

“The Pepsi Challenge” is something that has now come to mean occasions where someone wants to demonstrate their quality against the market available. My favorite use of it comes from Pulp Fiction, when Jesus looking drug dealer Lance (Eric Stoltz) in a salesman’s pitch of bravado says “I’ll take the Pepsi challenge with that Amsterdam shit any day of the week.” To that, John Travolta responds, “That’s a bold statement.”

And just as a warning, Uma, that’s not aaaaaaaaa coke.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Where Pepsi really made inroads on Coke in the 1980s was in restaurants. The “fountain” business was ripe for the taking as small franchises opened up national chains, and Pepsi came along for the ride. They focused on using that to expand their soda business. Eventually, in the early 1990’s, it led to them purchasing outright Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and other chains to maintain their hold on the market.

In another obscure fact, the person voicing “Pepsi, The Choice of a New Generation” in the commercials in the 1980s was Martin Sheen. I guess you could say he was “The Voice of a New Generation.”

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

Here’s forty years of Pepsi Commercials for you. The good ones from the 1980s start around the 16 minute mark. It’s super interesting watching these tagline evolve over the years.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. It was so successful, the CEO of Pepsi was given the job as CEO of APPLE when Steve Jobs was shown the door. Think about that, HE REPLACED STEVE FUCKING JOBS.

2. Much of this also had to do with missteps done by Coke as well, such as the forementioned change in formula. After much uproar, they brought back the original formulas “Coke Classic.”

3. I will say one of the weird things about growing up now is that music icons and sports idols we used to say they “Sold out” if they were ever featured on a marketing campaign of some kind. Today, people are famous for just being the face of the marketing campaign and rock stars sell out as a matter of principle—its their big pay day as an influencer generally.