A few years ago, the company PepsiCo , manufacturer and bottler of the drink Pepsi , launched a very particular advertising campaign. It was known worldwide as the “Pepsi Challenge” and basically consisted of a social experiment that sought to prove that the general public preferred the taste of Pepsi to that of Coca-Cola , which was, and still is today, the main competing brand.

In public places in many cities around the world, tasting tables were set up where people could try both sodas, under a procedure called “blind tasting”. That is, participants drank a sip of one of the drinks, then tried a sip of the other, and then had to determine their preference, expressing which of the two they liked best.

As the company expected, most people said they liked Pepsi better . Of course, the company took care that these results were disclosed and made known to the last end of the planet.

Effective marketing: the Coca-Cola reaction

Coca-Cola’s response was not long in coming. First they shouted at the top of their lungs, and then they set out to replicate the advertising campaign, but this time, obviously, starting from the exact opposite premise.

And indeed, what they were able to observe was that most people, when it came to choosing, were inclined towards Coca-Cola.

The contradiction in contrasting the data quickly became apparent. Either the people in Pepsi’s research and marketing department had misrepresented the data and were lying, or the people at Coca-Cola were. Both companies could not be right .

Independent research on Pepsi and Coca-Cola

It seems that the mystery reached the ears of a group of fanatical scientists of the drinks, who, moved by curiosity, set out to make their own investigation. They were determined to find out which of the two brands was preferred by the public .

But they introduced a variant into the process. This time, while the participants drank the soda, their brains were to be monitored under functional MRI technology.

What is functional MRI?

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a tool based on the use of a device that allows scientists to observe, live and in person, which group of neurons are activated in a person’s brain while he or she is asked to perform some activity ; in this particular case, to taste the dark and bubbly drink.

To do this, the person must be inserted, horizontally, into a resonator. His or her head is held in place with a harness, as it is necessary for it not to move so that brain activity can be monitored

This is possible because this type of technology allows us to measure the metabolism of nerve cells that shape the different structures that make up the brain. Where a greater blood supply and greater oxygen consumption is detected, it follows that there are neurons on and doing their job.

How did the soda reach the participant’s mouth in such uncomfortable experimental conditions? Simple: through a small hose that made it possible for the drink to travel from far away.

The power of the Coca-Cola brand on our brain

And here comes the really amazing thing.

The researchers found that both when people drank Pepsi and when they tasted Coca-Cola, what is commonly called “the pleasure circuit” was set in motion in their brains. This alludes to certain encephalic areas, which are responsible for the enjoyment we experience when we are exposed to circumstances that are to our liking. This can be drinking soda, as in this case, but also in very varied experiences, such as having sex, watching our favourite TV series, reading a book we are passionate about, eating churros filled with dulce de leche, or smoking marijuana.

But the curious thing is that, when the people who participated in the experiment were informed about the brand of soda they were drinking, something else happened, another region of the brain was activated.

This time, it was a very different structure from the previous one, called dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , which is located, approximately, behind each of the temples of the human skull.

What is the function of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex?

Well, this part of the brain is considered to be the anatomical basis of several higher order mental processes, typical of humans, including the formation of concepts and the organization and regulation of intellectual functions.

To simplify things a little, when participants drank soda without knowing the brand, the brain’s pleasure circuit was activated, triggered by the pleasant sensation coming from the taste buds.

But when they were informed of the brand of the drink, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was also lit. In other words, the area of the brain where the brand awareness and assessment is housed was also activated.

And here’s a detail that’s not minor. Dorsolateral neurons were much more laborious when people drank Coke than when they drank Pepsi. The resonator monitors were much more active when participants knew that the brand they were tasting was number one in the world.

And it turns out that the only procedural difference between the two original advertising campaigns had been that the Coca-Cola people told those who came to drink at their tasting stations which glass contained which soda. Moreover, the containers were marked with their respective logos.

In the “Pepsi Challenge”, on the other hand, participants made value judgments based solely on the taste of the drinks they were tasting, since they had no knowledge of which was which. In this case, the choice was strictly based on the degree of sensory satisfaction experienced by the person.

When marketing trumps taste

What does all this lead to?First of all, for most people, everything seems to indicate that Pepsi is tastier than Coca-Cola .

Second, when people know what they’re drinking, they prefer Coca-Cola, and this choice is driven primarily by the power of the brand.

It seems incredible, but a simple brand name can have enough weight to impose itself on the net sensory enjoyment that we experience when we consume a product.A simple brand can win over sense-based enjoyment, twisting our choices and leading us to opt for an alternative that causes us less pleasure than another.

When the participants in the experiment had the expectation that they would drink Coca-Cola, that soda seemed to them to be more tasty than the competition. When they didn’t expect to drink Coke, the ground was paved for real, clean, unconditioned sensory pleasure based on taste alone, and Pepsi clearly won. Amazing.

All trademarks have a value to us . And that value has a place in our brain. Marketing companies have known this for a long time. Their job is precisely to create as much added value as possible through the brand, which brings the product to a privileged position in the consumer’s mind. The instrument used for this purpose is the incessant bombardment of advertising by all possible means of communication. Something that Coca-Cola knows and does very well.