Playing to Win in Brand Rivalries

Coke vs. Pepsi and McDonald’s vs. Burger King. These big brand rivalries are nothing new to the marketing world. This week on the Brand Shorthand podcast, Mark and Lorraine dive into some recent brand battles in 2026, the strategy behind going against a rival, and tips and tricks for businesses to play to win against their competition.

Join Mark and Lorraine for 30-ish as they discuss all things marketing, advertising, and of course … positioning.

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is our brand politician, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, we just went through the primaries. I'm sure politics is on your mind, right? Or not.

Lorraine Kessler 
Not really. I mean, as a positionist, I do take sides. Right.

Mark Vandegrift 
Good. Well, we need that today.

Lorraine Kessler
But not, not politically. In fact, I just had some sorority sisters who were like, why don't you go into politics? I said, I would never go into politics. No way. When I, I love, I think the greatest achievement in life is living the life you want to lead anonymously.

Mark Vandegrift 
I love it. That's great. Well, today's topic is going to touch on politics. That's why I brought that up. And this is kind of about rivalries, right? You know you have the right and the left or the Dems and the Republicans or the liberals and whatever, right? But that happens in brand politics. And I think that's my favorite politics. So we're going to talk about that today and how marketers should play to win when going up against their competitors. So we're going to take on maybe the biggest one of all time, and that's Pepsi and Coke. So this was revisited lately, and it was interesting because Pepsi's recent Super Bowl commercial, and you remember that, I think, they took Coca-Cola's polar bear mascot and showed how he was choosing a can of Pepsi over the can of Coke. And then we talked about the fact that Coke then sent out a, I think it was, well, it was a reel, I'm pretty sure it was on Instagram, but I saw it on TikTok and other places and they battled that back and forth. It was really kind of a fun little scuttle to watch. So give us your thoughts on their most recent ad and the long lived rivalry of these two soda brands.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, it is fun and that's what that the rivalry is. They're making fun of each other in a a frenemy kind of way because they are number one and number two. So and there's not there's no entrant that's going to come in and unseat them from one or two. So I think in one part it does say it's they're comfortable with their positions. I'm sure Pepsi would like to grab some more market share but this isn't going to do it for them. It's really good for PR. It's actually better for Coke than it is for Pepsi because they're the leader. So anytime you advertise the leader's mascot, which they own, they own the polar bear. It's associated with Coke. And so anytime you advertise something the polar bear is doing, that's opposite what you expect you're actually doing advertising for Coke, right? So, and it actually concedes to me, Pepsi concedes therefore Coke's number one. And it's not as good for Pepsi because every time, like I said, they advertise, they remind the viewers about all the Coke-ness, all the Coke images that Coke has, the Santa Claus, the word refresh, the real thing, the polar bear, all that stuff. I know this isn't a perfect analog, but it does remind me, years ago, when we were first beginning to work with Goodyear, we learned that every time Goodrich advertised its tires, Goodyear sales went up. Because there's just too much closeness in that name. And I know it's not a perfect analog, but to me, if you take the Coke icon or brand persona of this polar bear and you advertise it in a very clear way that's associated with Coke, you're actually helping the enemy. So I'm not sure, I think it's really good for PR in that standpoint. I don't think it's gonna do diddly to change Pepsi's fortunes.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, I remember, I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but I do remember that the first time this ever popped into my space, my thinking space was McDonald's and Burger King. And Burger King ran ads that actually called out McDonald's and the only sales that went up were McDonald's. It was like the McDonald's CMO went to work for Burger King undercover. And I don't know why, but when I saw the Coke or the Pepsi ad with the Coke polar bear, I thought, did McDonald's CMO run over to Pepsi and like go undercover and go, Hey, this would be a really good idea. And Coke's response was so fast that I really honestly thought, okay, there's something going on here because it was just too stinking fast. And then it came out. I think the ad ran at Super Bowl by the end of the Super Bowl the Coke response was already out.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, to a prior conversation we had in our previous podcast with testing, who knows? Maybe they were testing this, Pepsi, and Coke became aware, you know, people, their spies are everywhere. And it wouldn't take much to figure out what they're doing and throw something together, not with the money and the resources that both brands have.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, Pepsi is in a distant fifth now because we know Coke is number one, then Diet Coke, then either Sprite or Dr. Pepper, and then Pepsi. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler 
Oh really? Yeah, that's right. We talked about that. I forgot Dr. Pepper.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Last year, think it was, or maybe two seasons.

Lorraine Kessler
So, well, they're still trying to make it perceptually a two horse race because they're still saying in the cola category specifically, right, versus the soda pop category. It's Pepsi Coke, Pepsi Coke. And I think people do think that way.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, yep, exactly. Well, speaking of McDonald's, did you see the McDonald's CEO posted a video of him trying the new Big Arch burger? And it went viral because people were commenting on how he barely took a bite, even though he was like, this is amazing. So this led to it like a stream of fast food CEOs jumping in on the action to show how you properly take a bite of a hamburger. It was hilarious. So give us your thoughts on the McDonald's CEO doing this thing and how you like the responses from these other CEOs.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, I would start by questioning the whole idea that a CEO is the best pitchman for your product or service. Some CEOs, as we know, are personalities on their own and can pull it off, like Colonel Sanders or Dave from Wendy's. They became famous. They were made famous and they were, they had personas. This guy doesn't have it. I mean, he just doesn't have the persona. Nobody knows who he is. He looks like he's a vegetarian. No, no. And the ridiculous bite, I don't even think he took a bite. And if he did, I don't think he swallowed. It's like a Bill Clinton. I didn't inhale.

Mark Vandegrift
Hey, maybe it's vegetarian. You know, they're saying they have these insect hamburgers and plant hamburgers. Maybe he had them replace it. Just that item.

Lorraine Kessler 
And then he didn't even seem to know all the ingredients. He kind of like, by the way, it has this. So I mean, and here's the problem. What happens? Someone gets this idea, either maybe he got the idea. That's really a problem. And there's a power dynamic, right? And anyone filming the spot or producing it is now wanting to play to the CEO and appease that person. And this actually happens because I study airplane crashes all the time. And this happens in some of the crashes. I know this is a, I know I'm going to make this relevant. This happens in some of the crashes where the co-pilot defers to the head pilot, the captain, simply because of power and makes bad decisions and doesn't challenge some of the decisions. So I think you get this guy for whatever reason he wants to do it or they want to do it and someone should have like, you know how we've directed commercials. We would have said, you know, we need you to take a bigger bite and look like you really enjoy it. Okay. I mean, we, but apparently nobody stepped up.

Mark Vandegrift 
Or get a stand in.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. Nobody's stepped up. So that's a problem. Will it hurt McDonald's? Probably not. They're doing so much advertising for this new product. I don't think it's gonna hurt them. Again, it just creates a little bit of a fun PR thing with digital, but it's a big nothing at the end of the day.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, speaking of undercover, what do you think of the Burger King CEO? Don't they look weirdly the same?

Lorraine Kessler 
I was like, when I saw that, I was like, is this the McDonald's CEO trying to Burger King? Because you had this whole thing about rivalry. You gave me that little lead in. So I'm thinking, so now is the McDonald's guy trying to Burger King and then a diss it? So it was really funny. But he, at least, is very candid. He looks authentic. It's very short. They don't ask him to do too much and it's actually more effective than the McDonald's one. No harm, no foul.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. So what about the Wendy CEO? Did you see that one?

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, I mean, here's my thing with that. First of all, I don't think the CEO is that bad. Again, I don't see what value he adds because this isn't the real person who should be enjoying their food, right? We all know the CEO is going to say good things about their product, right? So unless you're addressing a negative like the Domino's CEO did when they were fixing their pizza. Right? That was really good because it was like, we're fixing this, right? And then you need the authority behind it. But this was a long spot. My biggest problem with this, and I would be interested to know what our production staff and creative staff think. I think the production and the art direction and the cinematography was terrible. The food doesn't look good. Right? The grill doesn't look good. The store they shot it in doesn't. I mean, nothing looks good. I'm just like, and then I'm like, he's sitting down with those fries and I'm like, they got to be freezing cold by now. By the he ate them, no wonder he dumped them in a frosty. To me, it was just terrible art direction on that spot. He wasn't as bad as just the whole filming and art direction. cinematography, if you can call it that. I just think that was.

Mark Vandegrift 
They have a good ad running right now where they're doing the fry dip in the Frosty as a slam dunk. And they're comparing it to guy that's actually dunking a basketball.

Lorraine Kessler
okay. I didn't see that. Yep.

Mark Vandegrift 
And I've actually found that ad to be very well done. It's good production quality. It's speaking to one of Wendy's unique things. But I'll tell you what, we're long gone from the days of Dave Thomas being on the CEO and and long gone from Where's the Beef. And that was just great all time advertising. I don't know if we'll ever get back to that. I missed that.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, Papa John, when it was John, Schlatter, I think his name is, he had a personality. But again, it exploded in their face politically, right? And they had to move him out. So it's very dangerous to lead with your CEO. It's just like celebrity marketing. The Colonel Sanders was probably the best, in my opinion, because he's literally a personification of a person. Even though he's a real person, he's a personification. So it's almost like the Tony the Tiger kind of category. And they were able to bring him back with by casting many different actors because of that personification. So that one is a rare one. But it's kind of fraught with some dangerous barbs that could end up biting you more.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, there's a lot more transparency today. You know, we know a lot more about CEOs and what they believe and what they've done or not done and all of that. I think back then, I mean, Dave Thomas could have been a weirdo of some sort and we would have not known it. Today, it's hard to hide from that because of transparency. But so we have Coke Pepsi, have Burger King McDonald's. I think I would love to see some kind of a sparring go on between Apple and Microsoft. Cause those seem to be like the trifecta of brand politics, right? So you remember the Apple spot where, you know, you have the cool guy come on and he's poking fun at the business geek. Can you think of any other brands that come to mind that have done an excellent job at like calling out their primary rivalry?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I think I can. I mean Tylenol repositioned bear aspirin, right? Now here's the key and here's the difference. You don't just take on the rivalry like the way Pepsi did with the polar bear. And you don't just expose a negative. That's not smart. You really have to be thinking in the mindset of repositioning. What you're trying to do is you're trying to call out, it's called the law of opposites you're trying to show how your differential is opposite by calling out a negative that anyone can verify is true. And this works whether you're talking about a category or whether you're talking about a brand. So I'll give you a category example is Dove many, many years ago, way, way before even mass advertising came out and instead of saying it's just ordinary soap, it's the Beauty Bar because it had cream in it, good for your skin, and they've held onto that forever. This is about skin hygiene and good, healthy skin. It's not just about cleaning yourself, like with lye soap. We've repositioned in our time vinyl upholstery as high-performance fabric. So every time you do this, you're calling out a negative. That's vinyl. We're not. We're a performance fabric. We're not cloth. But we're made differently. And we're featuring on the benefits rather than how we're made. So that's a way of repositioning. And that's calling out a negative. Avis, going back, said we're number two. We try harder. Right? They called out the negative that was inherent in an inherent weakness in number one, Hertz. As the leader, they have longer lines, you waited longer and they had less customer service because they couldn't. So we try harder was a service message against number one that repositioned, called out a negative in the number one position. And I think right now, VRBO, is that how you say? Yeah, I think they're repositioning Airbnb by kind of going after this luxury vacation-oriented higher-end properties and kind of making Airbnb seem like the step down. So that's another reposition. Now those are smart. Those are good positioning. You both take your position and you say, you know, we stand for higher-end properties with more amenities that you'll know about more for vacation and luxury vacation and Airbnb is everything else. So that's good reposition. That's a lot different than what Pepsi's doing with Coke.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, there was one brand new one I just saw. I think I just noticed it in the last week. So Charmin's had that it's about to go or it's something like that. And it's the Bears and they're showing all of that. Well, I want to say Cottonel came out one and with a new ad and it's titled Come Clean. And so as the guys like using the toilet paper, he goes, I got to come clean. And he comes out and he starts saying, I hate football and I hate, yeah, I like this and I don't like you, John. And I don't like, and it's this idea of coming clean, not connecting it at all. But you can see that they're so trying to rip off what Charmin's been doing for quite a long time. And I just, it's, it's funny to me because I look at it go, you're really not pulling this off well.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, and I'm always uncomfortable about toilet paper advertising.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, at least they, you know, at least Charmin's gone to the animated bears and you can kind of tolerate it.

Lorraine Kessler 
I know, they had to, and they did that years ago after Mr. Whipple. But yeah, so.

Mark Vandegrift 
It'll be interesting to see if VRBO, moves the needle because on that one, you know, the former Alabama head coach, spends so much time. He's like such a major part of that, where he becomes the focus because this family shows up and he gives them a rule book and he says, you know, there's no having fun. This is not about having fun, you know, which does the positioning or repositioning of Airbnb well. But I'm wondering if people get those two brands mixed up, if VRBO is not creating enough brand separation in the mind that we know who they're talking about at that given time.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, think the intent from a positioning and repositioning standpoint of the VRBO is very good. But I think they're too indirect in naming their target. So they need to make it clear that they're trying to take share from Airbnb, that there's a distinction and a choice, just like Mac, we were talking Mac PC. That made it clear there's a distinction and who we're trying to take share from. And I always use this with my class and I always laugh when I say this. What was the famous quote by the bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robs banks? He said, because that's where the money is. So why do you go after number one if you were number two or number three and you want to be number two? Because that's where the money is.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, I, I own, I, guess I almost wonder if it's too little too late because anybody that's done Airbnb for as long as we have, we're like, I don't get this. I've never experienced this with Airbnb. So it's kind of, I know they're trying to manage perceptions and that's where marketing lives, but there's too many people that know reality and I I've never had that circumstance with Airbnb. So I don't know. It's it is what it is, but you know, we have a lot of small business listeners, right? They're either leaders or marketers of a small business. And what they do is they go and they try to copycat these brands and then wonder why their advertising didn't pay off. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see marketers make in this regard of trying to play, you know, politics with their rivalry?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, inconsistency. This kind of every day is a new day, every day is a new slogan, every day is a new theme, every year is a new totally different campaign. So I think in particularly because money and time are limited, they're limited resources, you need to stick with what works until it doesn't any longer. But we know that CMO changes, new marketing people come in, people love to be creative for creative sake and put their mark on things. And so what happens is they get this feeling that they're bored inside the house with this campaign or this theme or this slogan. And they want to invent something new because they make the mistake of thinking, the audience is familiar enough with that that they're now bored. And the truth almost 99 % of the time is that's not true. And if they are familiar, it doesn't matter because they find comfort in that. I just can go back and I defy listeners to this or viewers of this podcast to show me a brand that was built on random always changing positions and expressions. And not just the strategy, but the expression. Geico, 15 minutes could save you 15 % or more. How many times have we said that? Now they've changed that. That built them. Now they've changed it to, it feels good to Geico. That's like awful. Walmart, always low price. They built their entire multi-billion dollar business on that. Now it's Save Money, Live Better since 2007, which is okay, but they stayed with it. Okay. And it's in the ballpark. FedEx, when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. McDonald's, the Sonic logo, you know, that little five note melody. Fantastic, right? And I think one of the best and longest lasting of all and almost when I even wrote the words down today, I was like singing it in my head. Safe light repair, safe light replace. Frickin' genius. So what if they, some new CMO, people are bored with that. It's kind of old fashioned. Let's change, you know, that's the other thing I always hear. It's old fashioned, we need to be more modern. Whatever that means. What does to be more modern mean? Usually that's bad strategy and someone who just wants to reinvent to reinvent. So anyway, constancy, consistency, stick with it, find it, and then you'll find gold.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. And we talked about testing. I mean, we've talked so many things here that you would think that they would get in their mind this need for that. But I think you're right. Boredom is the biggest problem when it comes to marketing because we get tired of our own stuff. You know what? I look at Afflac. You know, when Afflac kicked off the duck, do you know what year? It's easy to remember.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh no. 92-

Mark Vandegrift 
January 1st, 2000. 

Lorraine Kessler
Okay. Wow.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, that was their first commercial, January 1st, 2000. And they've stuck with it ever since. Look at what that's done for them.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, it was perfect personification because it explained their name. It was a name no one knew how to pronounce. So, it was a fun way of remembering the name or recalling the name. That's fame. You get fame, fame for the name, and then that and the idea of what you stand for. And there's no, there's absolutely no doubt why they're number one in supplemental or gap insurance.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, for a small business, that's kind of what we were talking about, do you even think that taking on the competition directly is a good move given limited resources?

Lorraine Kessler 
No, you have to decide this is where you go to marketing warfare. You have to decide what your position is on the ladder in terms of market share and that determines your strategy. Only number two should always attack number one by going opposite. So repositioning based on the law of opposite is a number two move. Number three should do something new. You know, one, two or something new and find a way to not be like one and two but to do something that's missed or of a value to the constituent to the distinctive customer like you know a safe car versus the GM and Ford as Volvo did many years ago and now has lost it to support Subaru in my opinion. But yeah you have to be something new one two or something new and then beyond that, you really have to nicheify. You have to find a niche that you can command where you can expend or lavish resources on a smaller battlefield than the leaders would ever want to lavish on. Because they're so broad and so big, they don't want to just focus on that. But you can narrow the battlefield, lavish resources, and for you, that can make a lot of money because you're not of that size so those are the strategy you have to determine.

Mark Vandegrift 
So I would say our assessment is, except in extremely, extremely rare cases, would we ever directly call out a competitor by name and or inference, and especially not as a small business, the way to do it is by repositioning that brand, but not calling them out directly.

Lorraine Kessler 
I think you're a little more emphatic than I would be. Because I think there's a lot of ways to do that with great deft. I know we pretty much called for positioning ForeverLawn high performance turf or synthetic turf against astroturf as ordinary and I'm not sure how blatantly we called that out, but that was the idea.

Mark Vandegrift 
We didn't. Yeah, we didn't.

Lorraine Kessler 
But there's no problem doing that. Compare it to the leading turf. You could even say compare us to the leading turf. You'll find we have more performance attributes or benefits. I would do that all day long against the leading brand. So there's ways to do it with deafness. But again, it depends on your market position. In the case of ForeverLawn, which I just mentioned, they're an insurgent in the market at the high end of the market, the premium end. And that's why they have to promise greater performance benefits. And so technologically, they're a better product designed especially for different applications, not one product for all applications. And that's what makes them unique and different and worth the money. So we have to have that contrast to say, should I want high performance synthetic turf versus the ordinary? So even that's a positioning thing. This is, we're high performance, they're ordinary. And so I think comparisons, testing, those kinds of things are important.

Mark Vandegrift 
Good. Well, let's wrap up today's episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Thank you for joining us Lorraine. Thanks for our listeners joining us. And don't forget to like, share and scream it from the mountaintops. Hit that subscribe button and until next time, have an amazing day.