Not surprisingly, marketers are pulling out all stops to make sure you choose their brand, continuing the famed cola wars.
Last month Coca-Cola launched its “Halftime” campaign during the ICC Champions Trophy 2025. Flushed with colours and a compelling background score it inspires fans to pause, reset, and reignite before diving back into life. While it draws its inspiration from the halftime in sports, the ad extends the term to encompass various experiences. The campaign was conceptualized by VML Delhi and directed by Dibakar Banerjee.
Launched globally, the “Halftime” campaign was a combination of brand films, and digital experiences. India led the way for the campaign, with the first film highlighting how a sip of Coca-Cola turns fleeting moments into something special.
PepsiCo responded with a witty counter-campaign — the “anytime is Pepsi time” campaign. It exhorts consumers to sip atherefreshing beverage at ‘any time’ instead of waiting for a ‘half time’. The digital campaign was also supported by full-page newspaper advertisements amplifying the cola wars.
However, Pepsi’s tongue-in-cheek take on the Coca-Cola campaign apparently didn’t enthuse ad-watchers.
Experts suggest the cola wars of the 90s have lost their edge in today’s fragmented media landscape, where categories like fin-tech and food tech are creating more impactful and socially engaging campaigns.
“The tongue-in-cheek take by Pepsi is the classic irreverence that PepsiCo was so good at with campaigns such as ‘Nothing official About it’ and ‘Mera Number Kab Ayega’,” said Lloyd Mathias, a business strategist and investor. Matthias has worked in the beverages industry.
Mathias said the cola wars dominated the mind of the youth of late 90s and early 2000s. “It was an exciting category back in the day, backing music concerts, roping in superstars. However, in the last 10-15 years, a few other categories—such as technology, especially e-commerce and then telecom – have raced ahead. Category-wise the relevance of colas is not so significant today,” he said.
Mirroring economic growth
The popularity of western cola brands in India has closely mirrored the nation’s economic growth. Both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola were driven out from the country, only to return in the early 1990s after India’s economic liberalization. Their re-entry was a period marked by high-profile marketing campaigns, cricket sponsorships, and popular music anthems that effectively captured the cultural quotient of the country. They routinely took digs at each other with clever campaigns. Pepsi’s “Nothing Official About It” campaign during the 1996 Cricket World Cup is a famous example of their aggressive marketing fight. In the late 90s Pepsi was also credited with coining the famous “Yeh Dil Maange More” campaign with the viral slogan.
Regarding the recent “Anytime is Pepsi time” advertisement, a company spokesperson stated it is a continuation of the “Yeh Dil Maange More” campaign, which celebrates spontaneity and living in the moment with Pepsi.
“Whether it’s a sports screening, a road trip, or a break from routine, Pepsi enhances the moment – anytime,” the spokesperson said. “At PepsiCo India, we thrive on creating cultural moments that spark conversations. With the ‘Anytime is Pepsi Time’ campaign, we set the stage for a bold and refreshing dialogue that resonated with brands and consumers alike. The buzz around the campaign sparked an ‘Anytime’ wave across social platforms, with brands and consumers joining the ‘Anytime’ dialogue,” the spokesperson added.
Others said Pepsi’s campaign was also aimed at maintaining relevance in the face of increased competition from yet another cola brand, Reliance-backed Campa.
“Even though it looks like Pepsi was reacting to Coca-Cola, I believe they were—based on the 2nd page of the ad with the reduced pricing, and the subsequent ad after India won—reacting to Campa Cola’s aggressive pricing particularly before the big summer sales,” said Karthik Srinivasan, a communications consultant.
Cola wars do continue to evoke interest, he said. “Consider a Pepsi ad that only talked about its own product and pricing and nothing about Coca-Cola’s ‘Halftime’ campaign. That is unlikely to be talked about by people at all since it’s a run-of-the-mill functional ad by Pepsi. But now, because they seemingly initiated a rivalry with Coca-Cola’s theme, people are taking note of an ad that they’d have not spoken about at all. I’d argue that it is because of shorter attention spans that the ‘cola wars’ style of campaigns is all the more relevant,” he added.
For sustained campaigns
The cola wars could inspire more interest with sustained campaigns, said others.
“If this were a sustainable and a long-term idea on which many different campaign executions were built (with the same advertising idea), then yes this would have made sense and would have made a lasting impression on consumers,” said Vani Gupta Dandia, founder CherryPeachPlum, a marketing consultancy firm. Dandia has formerly worked at PepsiCo India.
Dandia said consumers today have a short attention span. “A lot of the campaigns that are discussed on LinkedIn are only discussed on LinkedIn; and make the likes of us marketers and advertisers feel happy and clever. A return to the cola wars will mean a series of clever repartee on both sides—which will help raise the decibel levels for the cola category,” she said.
Dr Sandeep Goyal, chairman, Rediffusion said for a category that’s all about “fizz”, the campaigns lacked fizz. “Cola wars were always sexy, but today there are so many categories that have become sexier and entertaining than the colas. Companies like Cred etc are doing some fresh work,” he said.
He recalls Coca-Cola’s Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola campaign from the early 2000s that sustained itself for years and created a strong recall for the brand. “Both brands are doing stuff they were doing back in the day. Looks like a category needs some excitement,” he said.
