[anonymous908213]

> I am a skeptic that one more Coke Cola ad aired at the Super Bowl meaningfully changes sales

It actually might. Coca Cola had $48b revenue last year, or in other words, 4800 millions. Spending 7 of those millions to put your product in front of 100 million people seems like a reasonable bet. If even a couple percent of those people are (sub)consciously influenced to pick up a 12-pack the next time they stop by a store when they might otherwise not have, it would likely be a profitable endeavour given the profit margins on their sugar water.

I think there's also a longer-term status play at stake. If only one of Coca Cola or Pepsi engaged in flashy advertising to this degree, it might give them a slight edge in status perception. In the long term, even an 0.1% shift in consumer preferences between Coca Cola or Pepsi would shift significantly more than 7 million in value. So if one of them engages in this, the other is obliged to follow, in a classic prisoner's dilemma. At any rate, given that 4800 millions in annual revenue translates to 13 million in sales per day, the number paid for that advertisement is a rounding error and doesn't have to move the needle very much at all to be successful.

[hn_throwaway_99]

The irony is that this especially true for Coca Cola. They are basically an advertising company at heart. They sell flavored sugar water. For all the hype about "are you a coke person or a Pepsi person", in blind tests most people can't tell the difference between coke and generic cola. The billions they spend in marketing annually helps ensure they can sell their flavored sugar water for a lot more than Aldi sells their store brand flavored sugar water.

[cyberax]

I don't know, I can distinguish between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola easily. I prefer Diet Coke, FWIW.

I also now have a bottle of Lab Cola from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc and it _is_ indistinguishable from regular Coca-Cola to me. So it might be plausible in case of a deliberate Coca-Cola knock-off?

[2Gkashmiri]

I also "can" and so can my siblings but I actuallly stopped drinking sugar water but my siblings don't so they are "passionate" about coke and "hate" Pepsi for some reason. I don't understand

[conductr]

Pepsi is disgusting to me. To even speak of them as substitutes is outrageous to me. If you like it fine. I like both mayo and mustard but if someone doesn’t like mayo I don’t recommend it as a substitute for mustard.

[Dylan16807]

> in blind tests most people can't tell the difference between coke and generic cola

According to who?

I think most colas taste fine but it's not hard to differentiate the ones I've had.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> According to who?

According to researchers who actually ran blinded tests: https://daily.jstor.org/the-coca-cola-wars-can-anybody-reall...

What's funny is kind of the reverse is also true: when people were given the exact same cola but one was labeled Coke and the other Pepsi, not only did they say they preferred Coke, but fMRI brain scans should more prefrontal cortex activation for the Coke as well: https://medium.com/@marketingoal/the-pepsi-vs-cola-cola-expe... . That's the power of branding.

[Dylan16807]

That blinded test isn't about telling the difference though, it's knowing which is which, a significantly harder thing to do without practice. And I don't know how many of the participants regularly drink any of the brands, which makes identification even harder.

[jcattle]

Have you done a blind test before? A group of friends and I have done a blind test of around 10 coke brands before. The only ones you could reasonably tell apart were Pepsi and some dubious organic cokes. But of all the ones that actually try to replicate the coca cola flavour it was just pure guesswork on our side.

[wincy]

I did a blind taste test of Starry, Sprite, and 7-Up the other day. My wife was amused when I nailed all three. As a recovering fat guy, I’m a bit of a soft drink connoisseur (diet soda now!).

Unfortunately then the question became “well, which do you prefer?” And my answer was “I have no idea”.

[Dylan16807]

I've never had any that specifically tried to replicate another brand, no. That's naturally going to be harder than telling apart normal colas.