Are you a Coke or a Pepsi person?

No, this isn’t a dating question, nor are we judging you. Promise!

The Coca Cola and Pepsi war is legendary. We’ve seen the two cola giants fight it out since the 1980s with no clear winner. Their supporters join the fray more often than not.

This war and the one raged by their fans has resulted in displays of some brilliant advertising campaigns and jabs. Here are two:

CocaCola and Pepsi Ad 1

coke vs pepsi

If there ever were two competitors worth comparing, they are Coca Cola and Pepsi. We decided to take our analysis of these two rivals online and see how they were doing on one of the most popular social networks – Twitter. Twitter analytics, i.e. numbers, are a good way to measure any brand’s performance on the platform.

Twitter analytics includes analysis of a lot of things, including, but not limited to, number of tweets, number of followers, following, favorites received, retweets received, mentions received and more.

We’ve compared and contrasted Coca Cola and Pepsi on sheer numbers, their social strategies and the amount of engagement they receive.

Coke vs. Pepsi on Twitter: The Numbers

Coca cola was a latter entrant, joining Twitter in March 2009 to Pepsi’s December 2008. Winner: Pepsi

Despite the late entry, Coke has sent over three times the number of Tweets Pepsi has sent, with counts at 97.5K and 27K respectively.

Winner: Coca Cola

Both Pepsi and Coca Cola have the same number of followers: 2.73M

Winner: Draw

Pepsi has a more visual timeline as compared to Coke, having tweeted out 1,103 photos and videos to Coke’s 602.

Winner: Pepsi

Coke vs. Pepsi on Twitter: Profile Strength

Both brands have custom headers and profile pictures

Winner: Draw

Coca Cola has no bio, while Pepsi only uses a hashtag #LiveForNow

Winner: Pepsi

Coke displays its location as Atlanta, GA, while Pepsi does not disclose.

Winner: Coke

Coke vs. Pepsi on Twitter: Engagement

Coca Cola was mentioned 1035764 times in tweets last month, while Pepsi was mentioned 303229 times.

Winner: Coke

In the last ten tweets it sent sent out, Coca Cola received a total of 46 retweets (only), while Pepsi received 1231, which is better, but not exceptional.

Winner: Pepsi

 

I. The Curious Case of 2.73M Followers

What we found quite amusing was the fact that both brands have practically the same number of followers. When I first checked they were both at 2.73M. At the time of writing this post, Coke was ahead by 6000 followers, which is not at lot.

We don’t know which of the two is trying to match up to the others followers count and by what means, but it looks very dicey from where I stand. For, let’s accept it, a lot of us do judge Twitter accounts by the number of followers they have and neither Pepsi, nor Coca Cola, would want to be judged inferior to its biggest rival.

 

II. The Curioser Case Of Dismal Engagement Rates

For accounts that have almost 3M followers, their engagement rate is pretty dismal. Even if you were to consider Pepsi’s 1231, which relatively looks better than Coke’s, most of those retweets came from one good post, this one:

 

If you were to consider the rest, Pepsi averages just 44.5 retweets per tweet. The figure, of course, is far worse for Coke at 4.6 . In fact some of Coca cola’s tweets receive no interaction at all –  no retweets, no favorites, no replies, nothing.  

 

III. They Keep Tabs On Each Other Both accounts’ social media managers peep into each others’ accounts. They really do. One proof was the kind of creatives I saw being created. I noticed Pepsi using its blue can to create creatives and a month later coke followed suit. This was the first Pepsi post of that kind  

and this was the first Coke post of that sort. A couple more similar posts came up thereafter.

IV. Campaigns Not Found

Pepsi doesn’t seem to run interactive campaigns as part of its Twitter marketing strategy. Coke ran a good #shareacoke campaign over several days and received quite a few responses.

V. Twitter Strategy Missing?

Both brands are huge and surely have equally huge social media teams to manage their presence on big social media platforms. Despite this fact, the quality of their tweets and the amount of effort that seems to have gone in seems to be sorely lacking. Smaller brands can easily trump them with a far lesser marketing budget and better defined objectives. The fact that they don’t even have proper bios tells all.

In conclusion, there is no clear winner. Coca Cola is doing better than Pepsi in some respects and vice versa. However, if you weren’t to compare relatively, both brands have a lot of room for improvement as far as their Twitter marketing goes.

Here’s an infographic that sums up all the Twitter analytics pertaining to Pepsi’s and Coca Cola’s comparative performance: