A century has passed and the cola wars rage on. What valuable lessons can be taken from both Pepsi and Coca-Cola in the subject matter of brand marketing! A century of branding history is now repeating itself, as we prepare to apply lessons learned to Internet branding.
The entire southern hemisphere of the United States will refer to a soda as a Coke. Brand awareness in this case has not only given Coca-Cola a household name, but every single time it is mentioned they get free advertisement- and the best kind! Easy lesson learned: if you can work your business name into the vocabulary of customers you will have an edge that competitors can’t beat.
So let’s apply these principles to the web. All of the buzz on the web comes from branded domain names: Digg, Twitter, and Google to name a few. You should be aware of such phrases:
-”I’ve just dugg a great story!”
-”I updated my friends in a tweet.”
-”Google this phrase.”
What nonsense, isn’t it? But it’s nonsense that makes sense. Such lingo spawns a culture that spreads as more users catch onto your brand. In the same way you can call any soda a Coke, yet maybe not a Pepsi, you can say to someone, “Hey, Google this!” and yet “Hey, Yahoo! this!” hasn’t quite caught on.
(Despite Yahoo! having an early dominance on the search industry.)
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.
You would be surprised to see just how loyal customers are to your branding; something seen in 1985 when Coca-Cola changed their formula to taste more like Pepsi. The result, which some called Cokesi, spawned a widespread backlash. Coca-Cola soon learned that you don’t fix if it “ain’t broke.” And you most certainly don’t want to be caught imitating a brand already in existence!
But even when your company is pushing for a positive, unique, brand change things might not go over so smoothly. In one case, the late SciFi channel changed its name to SyFy. The company stuck with the name change for stated branding purposes, but not without a large backlash from long-time fans. Persistence has proven their stance is looking hopeful, despite the initial ill feelings of long time fans.
Both extremes prove that you can’t beat a good branding. Even when resistance ensues, separating your brand from others is the best choice.
Can’t beat competitors? Find a new brand.
Take a look at the Coca-Cola stock and Pepsi stock history. The past decades show that Coca-Cola has consistently, if only marginally, been ahead of Pepsi. The 1990’s was the peak of their height, until something interesting happened: Pepsi let Coca-Cola have their victory.
Coca-Cola may still dominate the cola industry, but Pepsi is the one laughing! In their constant struggle to change and keep in the eye of the public, Pepsi developed many great non-carbonated beverages that have consistently outsold Coca-Cola products. Consumers will grab an Aquafina before they even think about touching a Dasani.
In the same course of thinking we can see how Google took the search engine market. Google said, “Hey, fine, Yahoo! has a great search portal. What they don’t have is a clean interface or targeted results. Innovation gives us room to take the market.”
Now both niches are fairly locked down thanks to branding. Start up your own news portal or search engine and odds are you won’t get anywhere. The brand already exists. Building a new brand is the only way to take a share of the market.
A last lesson learned: keep it relevant!
The late 1990’s brought the hit commercial from Taco Bell featuring a talking dog.
A massive following ensued, but only three years later the advertisement was considered a complete failure. Marketing executives at Yum! Brands were perplexed. The feedback from the ads turned back great- but no one was acting on the popularity and buying more Taco Bell inventory.
After some research the marketing executives learned a valuable lesson: your branding should be relevant to your product in some shape or form. A talking dog doesn’t exactly inspire an urge to go buy a taco, although if Taco Bell decided to sell small dogs at some point it might have worked out better.
Closing Comments
On a final note: every mistake spoken of was a learning lesson for the respective company. Each company who found a fault in their ideas or plans made actions to counteract their misguided thoughts. Market research, thus, is a valuable tool you shouldn’t forget about when testing out new brands, services, or products in the future.
Written by Zachary Schuessler, CEO of SEOFaction.com.
More information on Business Branding and Reputation Management can be found on the Services page.
Zachary, you have incredible insight and a great ability to outline an argument. I really enjoyed this post and loop forward to reading more (and am a bit jealous as I wish I had the writing skill set you have). Please keep it up!
Great site, how do I subscribe?