top of page
Search
  • Writer's pictureWilliam Roy

Top 5 Ongoing Marketing Battles

The word ‘rivalry’ has a somewhat negative connotation. We often imagine two competitors who are going to extremes to become victorious. Nothing can stop them, they’ll be fighting for every customer, they’ll book all celebrities to promote Digital Marketing Company in New York their brands and monopoly is their only final goal. However, everything is less ferocious, because rivalry in the marketing sphere leads to a rapid business development, improvement of products and services, and creates healthy economic environment. Yet, marketing rivalry between popular brands can indeed resemble a cruel battlefield. So let’s take a look at the champions of the marketing wars. Coca Cola VS Pepsi These two brands made the whole world watching their fascinating battle and anticipating their next marketing move with awe. Cola was first introduced in 1886 by a pharmacist and became an instant hit. Probably because it contained cocaine at first. While Pepsi got its original recipe in 1893 and at that time, it was known as Brad’s Drink. When it comes to the recipe, Pepsi is sweeter (which means more calories), and it contains more caffeine. Plus, it has more citrus-ish flavor in comparison to vanilla-ish aftertaste of Coke. But which one is better? Of course, it all depends on your personal preferences and demands of your taste buds, so we can only determine which one is more popular by looking at reliable data. Besides, according to a research, most people can’t really tell the difference and their choice is mainly based on a habit and a cultural association. Coca Cola sells 2.3 billion gallons (8.7 billion liters) of the beverage annually, while Pepsi can reach only half of that amount. Market capitalization of Coke company is $180 billion and Pepsi isn’t lagging behind with $150 billion. How about annual revenues? According to 2015 data, Coke earned $44 billion, while Pepsi grossed $63 billion. In the era of social media, it’s impossible to neglect a level of the brand’s influence throughout the world wide web. In total, collecting the data from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Coca Cola has almost 113 million followers, while Pepsi has only 40 million. Among the most notable marketing campaigns we should definitely mention Pepsi’s Super Bowl ads and Cola’s Christmas ads. Will the rivalry ever come to an end? We have no idea, but it’s definitely fun to watch. McDonald’s VS KFC VS Burger King Three championship finalists this time! All three are famous, popular, tasty, and extremely competitive. Let’s figure out who will become a winner in this game of fast food thrones. All three chains have approximately the same price for their products. The criteria that would make the difference are a variety and diversity of food. An indisputable winner here is McDonald’s with its devotion to innovation and experiments. The company proposes seasonal and holiday menus which never fail to please loyal customers and attract new visitors. The clown-themed fast food chain was established in 1940 and by revenue, it’s not only the most profitable among three of its main rivals, it’s the most commercially successful among all restaurant franchises in the whole world.

Comparing a number of restaurants worldwide, McDonald’s appears to be the winner here as well having around 37,000 sites, a runner-up is KFC with 19,000 and then comes Burger King with a bit over 16,000 sites. How about social media? Surprise, surpise! The first place goes to McDonald’s with total number of followers on such social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter 85.8 million. The next is KFC with a combined number 55.6 million, and Burger King is the last one with only 13.8 million followers. Marvel VS DC The most epic battle happens when superheroes and supervillains join their forces to fight superheroes and supervillains from another comic book universe. Have you been embroiled into this clash? Are your friends fighting what media production company is better and making you pick a side? Or maybe you’re one of those people who are screaming from top of their lungs that Hulk is stronger than Superman. We bet you’d like to find out which brand has a better marketing strategy. Honestly speaking, even after making a research concerning all possible aspects, it’s still hard to tell. DC Comics was founded in 1934, while Marvel Comics – in 1939 and from the very beginning, DC appeared to be an undeniable leader and Marvel was barely able to keep up. It was going on until Marvel hired Stan Lee as a new writer, editor, and producer. Generally, DC is often perceived as a classic one with a somewhat conservative approach (and sooo many people love it), while Marvel is known to be an innovative and funny one. Traditionally, let’s compare the two companies based on their social media activity. Ooops, this time we definitely have a winner. With the number of followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram combined, DC comics has 15 million and Marvel has a massive number of 68.3 million of loyal fans.

Nike VS Reebok VS Adidas It’s hard to find a celebrity or an influencer whom these companies haven’t recruited as their brand ambassadors. They’re so competitive that just creative advertising isn’t enough for them, they’re creating social media campaigns, organize charities, international sports events, sponsoring tournaments. Let’s just clarify that Adidas have acquired Reebok in 2005, so we’ll cut this marketing rivalry story into some parts. Adidas is a German brand and according to the marketing research, it’s much more popular in Europe, while Nike as a true American, attracts mostly citizens from the US. The main focus of production of both companies is footwear, followed by clothes, and sports equipment. The last year revenue of Adidas appeared to be $24 billion, while Nike ended up with a more impressive sum of $34.4 billion. According to the 2019 online poll, Nike is a go-to choice of 61.5% respondents, and therefore, Adidas is left with 38,5% of votes. And the last criterion is social media following. After calculating a number of followers of three most widespread social media platform, we’ll see that Nike is twice as popular with the Internet community in comparison to Adidas. 61.7 million subscribers VS 124.9 million.

Visa VS MasterCard At the moment, it’s not about a brutal and merciless rivalry, but more about cooperation on the market and mutually beneficial marketing campaigns aimed at bringing down common competitors like Discover and American Express. Visa and MasterCard will become a cherry on top of our list, because if in all other marketing competitions we could clearly determine the winner, we see a tie here. Nonetheless, two credit card networks are still investing whopping sums of money into marketing and advertising campaigns in order to attract attention, so let’s take a look whether they are succeeding at this. The main marketing tool of both MasterCard and Visa is collaboration with various chains (like shops and restaurants) and celebrities. For example, Costco is accepting only Visa cards and Sam’s club used to accept only MasterCard (but now, it swings both ways). Visa invited Katy Perry and Camila Cabello to become brand’s ambassadors, while MasterCard teamed up with Gwen Stefani. Although, when we’re talking about the level of market control, Visa is an obvious champion holding 45% of all world credit cards, while MasterCard has only 24% in its possession. What about social media? Visa is way ahead Digital Marketing Company Seattle of its rival/colleague since MasterCard has 130k of Instagram followers and Visa has so many that we can’t really calculate them all because it doesn’t have a single Instagram account, but has one for every country. Having said all that, it really doesn’t matter what payment net you’ll choose since they have pretty much the same benefits and acceptance rate throughout the world. It’s just that Visa managed somehow to come up with better and more successful marketing campaigns.           

-->

5 views0 comments
bottom of page