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The Rediff Business Special/Cola Wars

Fizzy cocktail of glamour and clamour

Suhasini Haidar in New Delhi

A famous American commercial for a popular branded clear soft-drink (let's call it Lemon-fizz to stay out of controversy) has a basketball player asking, "Would it matter? Would it matter if I wasn't famous or if I didn't really drink Lemon-fizz? Would it make Lemon-fizz taste worse?" And then he exhorts you to buy the drink because of the way it tastes and not because of who endorses it. You might think that's sensible, but those that don't are the world's soda-beverage giants Pepsi and Coke themselves.

In fact, if the brouhaha that erupted between Coke and Pepsi in India last month when film star Aamir Khan switched his loyalties from Pepsi to Coca-Cola is anything to go by, it would seem that both companies are rushing to go all out to sign up all the celebrities they can.

And having done that, they will probably then rush over to the stars on the other side, to try and buy them over too. When last heard, Indian speedster Javagal Srinath and Bollywood starlet Twinkle Khanna are the latest celebrities who have been signed up by Coke.

While Coke has now been able to rope in stars such as Aamir Khan (they reportedly agreed to pay him Rs 20 million to have him cross over), Karisma Kapoor and Rambha, Pepsi pulled off its own coup by having the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai team of Shahrukh Khan, Kajol and Rani Mukherjee on their side, as the movie became a superhit.

And between them, they have co-opted most of the Indian cricket team too. Sachin has gone to Pepsi, with Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Ajit Agarkar. Coke has captured the ten-wicket wonder Anil Kumble, Saurav Ganguly and Srinath, amongst others.

Shyam Dhanoa, an independent ad-filmmaker who has worked on campaigns with various Indian drinks manufacturers, is sceptical of the results these star endorsements produce. "Do you really think that the masses in India notice what drink Aamir Khan or Kajol holds in the ads? In any case, surveys have shown that a negligible number of people can tell the difference between one cola drink and another."

There's the other problem: even once the cola manufacturer establishes a preference in the mind of the consumer for one product over another, how do they make it stick? After all, says Munira Khanna, a Delhi University student, "If I go into a restaurant and ask for a Pepsi, I don't really mind if they say that they're out of Pepsi and give me Coke instead (or the other way around)."

To counter this, Pepsi and Coke have rushed in to not just tie up celebrities, but now compete at every street-corner, to tie up restaurants, amusement parks, chaat shops, and paan-dukans. They sign them up with exclusivity contracts that say that they can only serve Coke or Pepsi-owned drinks (Sprite, 7 Up etc) at their establishments. And why stop there -- the whole world is out there, just waiting to be polarised and sucked in towards the Coke stable or the Pepsi stable of drinks.

A case in point was the battle for Appu Ghar, a children's amusement park in Delhi. Pepsi had rights to sell their products there, and Coke wanted them. So a bidding war erupted for sales of soft drinks at Appu Ghar, with Coke finally emerging the winner.

Ajay Bijli, owner of the most popular cinema halls in Delhi, Priya and PVR-Anupam, had an even more pragmatic answer to the Cola war. He signed up with Coke for his cinema theatre Priya, whereas Pepsi got the contract to sell at PVR-Anupam. "It was a commercially well-thought-out plan," says Bijli. "It didn't make sense to go with just one company for both the halls."

Part II -- Shapely bottles, unseemly battles

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