\While it may not be Hatfield vs. McCoy, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola have enough bad blood between them to fill a Wikipedia page and even cause skirmishes among drivers. The rivalry may have flattened a little since its Pepsi challenge/New Coke days, but things got heated again last Friday in court.
At contention was whether Coke's brand Powerade had lied in advertisements for its ION4
sports drink. Billboard ads showed a Powerade bottle looming over a Gatorade bottle lopped in half, while the tag "the complete sports drink" implied that the Powerade contained vitamins the Gatorade drink did not have.
Pepsi, which owns Gatorade, thought this unfair. And even though the billboards were taken down months ago, it decided to sue. The hearing then turned into a legal brawl.
Ad Age covered the hearing.
Some of the low-lights include Powerpoint slides from Powerade's
marketing department saying "It's time to make Gatorade sweat like the
dirty pig it is. Our squad is gonna kick the shit outta their
squad ... Gatorade is really fucked
now."
Pepsi's lawyer compared Coke's
behavior to poisoning a well and later belittled a witness who had
come up with the scientific-sounding ION4 name, saying he had tried
to deceive people: "You thought that Ion4 was a nice little trick you
had up your
sleeve, didn't you?"
Reading the court transcripts is like
watching a squabble between two estranged, over-privileged brothers. Instead of
suing Coke, Pepsi should have come up with its own rebuttal ads for Gatorade
and fought this in the court of public opinion, which is where this case
belongs.
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