The age-old battle between Pepsi and Coca-Cola continues…this time, with emojis!

In what must be a slow news week, Pepsi is making headlines with emojis. 🎉📰👏😳

Specifically, Pepsi announced the upcoming launch of their newest global “Say it with Pepsi” campaign, which will feature Pepsi emojis, or PepsiMojis, on bottles and cans starting this summer.

The PepsiCo Design & Innovation Center created hundreds of PepsiMojis for the project. Many of the emojis are very, very similar to the iOs and Android emoji libraries, with the exception of some new ones, including an emoji of the Pepsi logo.

The purpose of the campaign is to, no doubt, drive sales as well as to encourage people of the world promote the brand on social media with campaign hashtags, including #pepsimoji and #sayitwithpepsi. What was the inspiration for the campaign?  A Pepsi spokesperson has explained that emojis are now an universal language that transcends across cultures…Right…

In my opinion, Coca-Cola is the real winner in all this. By far.

You have, I’m sure, seen Coca-Cola’s wildly successful “Share a Coke with ____” campaign that brings personalization and delight to each and every bottle and can. Coke cans are tagged with over a thousand first names and fun phrases like “Party Starter” and “My Better Half.” Aside from increased sales (over 150 million bottles sold), Coke received a great social media boost (almost a billion Twitter impressions to date) when consumers started to post pictures of themselves with their personalized bottles.

And now, Pepsi is clearly trying to get in on that action. While I can’t deny it – I LOVE a good emoji – I can’t help but roll my eyes at Pepsi’s “me too!” initiative.  I understand Pepsi’s need to one-up Coke but this seems pretty desperate and, not to mention, eerily similar to “Share a Coke.” To add insult to injury, EVERY SINGLE ARTLE I read about the PepsiMojis mentioned the Coke campaign and compared the two. While I recognize the massive money that Pepsi is throwing into the campaign, Coke seems to be enjoying a great deal of free publicity – at Pepsi’s expense! For that reason alone, I call Coke the winner on this one.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/02/19/pepsi-emoji-advertising-marketing-campaign/80602336/

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/pepsi-about-unleash-emojis-its-bottles-and-cans-globally-summer-169782

http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/history/advertising/share-a-coke/

http://www.sayitwithpepsi.ca/