Drinks war: Coca-Cola and Pepsi play with different footballs

Sursa: Pixabay

 The advertising battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi continues, with the two drinks giants dividing up major competitions. After Coke sponsored the football World Cup, its rival Pepsi took Sunday’s Super Bowl, the biggest game of the „other football,” writes eToro analyst for Romania, Bogdan Maioreanu

.

This year’s final of the American football championship was the third in a row without the presence of Coca-Cola ads, leaving the path clear for Pepsi. Pepsi commercials featured well known actors Ben Stiller and Steve Martin to promote the brand’s zero sugar beverages.

 

The Super Bowl telecast by Fox, on Sunday night, brought in an average 113 million viewers, according to Nielsen. This is 1% bigger than last year’s game, but also the third biggest television program of all time. The only telecasts to ever score a larger audience have been two other Super Bowls: the 2015 game (114.4 million) and the 2017  game (113.7 million). The viewership peaked to over 118 million people watching the traditional half time show that was Rihanna’s first live appearance in five years. The advertising prices during the whole game were estimated between 6 and more than 7 million dollars for 30 second slots.

 

While not being present with ads in the Super Bowl, Coca-Cola is pursuing its own sports and digital marketing plan aimed at more engagement with its customers. Long term sponsor of FIFA since 1974 and the Football World Cup since 1976, the company mentioned that its campaign during FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar created digital experiences for the fans with more than 5 million accessing its own digital platform – Fan Zone. Also a partnership with Panini, the official sticker album of the World Cup resulted in 400% more interactions than the previous  2018 World Cup with 28 million product label scans from fans trading physical and digital stickers.

 

For Pepsi, this year brought a change too. While having ads during the Super Bowl, Pepsi decided to let go of its 10 year halftime show sponsorship. The NFL gave it to Apple (APPL). This year’s halftime show in Super Bowl 57 was sponsored by Apple Music. Rihanna was not paid for her performance because the NFL does not pay artists but covers the expenses and production costs of the show. While halftime performers don’t get a paycheck from the NFL, the artists are given the opportunity to promote their newest albums or singles, driving traffic to their upcoming tours or latest projects to hundreds of millions of viewers across the globe. In 2020, Spotify reported that Super Bowl LIV’s halftime performance by Shakira spiked her streams by 230% while Jennifer Lopez’s went up 335%.

 

For PepsiCo Inc. (PEP), 2022 was a good year – even in the football played by the rest of the world, while Pepsi was not in the World Cup sponsors box, it was the company’s star footballer Lionel Messi who first lifted the trophy. The company announced an organic revenue growth of 14.4% with an EPS of 6.79 dollars for the whole year and net revenues in excess of 86 billion dollars. The largest contributor is Pepsi Beverages North America, followed by Frito Lay – the food arm of the company – and the business in Europe. But the latter was impacted by the Ukraine conflict showing a 207% decrease in operating profits. In 2023 Pepsi expects to increase 6% in organic revenue, to deliver 10% more in dividends to shareholders paying 6.7 billion dollars and to repurchase one billion dollars worth of shares.

Its rival Coca-Cola (KO) also had a very good 2022 too. For the full year, net revenues grew 11% to 43.0 billion dollars, and organic revenues grew 16%. Also the company is showing a higher operating margin of 22.7% compared with 22.1% a year ago. But in Europe, the unit case volume declined 5% in Q4, as strong growth in Western Europe was offset by the suspension of business in Russia. For 2023 Coca-Cola sees organic revenue increase of 7% to 8%. The company estimates EPS of 2.58 to 2.60 dollars. For the investors having dividends gain strategies the news coming from both companies is very good.

_

LĂSAȚI UN MESAJ

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here