Pop Culture Essay

“If there are 12 million people with our stuff, let’s have them be 12 million 18 year olds.” Says Dave Burwick vice president of marketing for Pepsi-Cola(Hey Kids Buy This pg. 98), and why not, child spending has risen from $122 billion to $172 billion in the past 5 years(familyed.org). In a time when advertising agencies are trying to get the most for their buck, and who isn’t, the smartest thing to do is target the ever growing population of children. In today’s society children’s average weekly allowance is just $5(Children and Money pg. 1), amounting over $260 a year, if you multiply this number by the number of children in the US today, it is outrageous, close to $5 billion. Seeing as children only save about half a billion dollars a year (Children and Money pg. 1), that’s a lot of money being spent on clothes, video games, toys, soda and candy. The funny thing is, marketers that had long ignored children, now systematically pursue them. Today, as well as clothing and toys, it’s also computers, airlines, hotels and banks(Hey Kids Buy This pg. 97). Pepsi, being one of the major soft drink companies in the United States today, has the right idea. By using a different pop icon, such as Brittany Spears, Christina Agulara and Beyonce Knowles in each new advertisement, they are guaranteed to have the attention of the younger generations, and probably some older men too. In fact, the first thing you see when you open their web site is a perfect picture of Beyonce smiling and enjoying a Pepsi. You, as a consumer, are suppose to think if she is so perfect and she drinks Pepsi then maybe I should too. It’s an ingenious idea, using such beautiful people in your advertisements. Coke, Pepsi’s number one competitor, has a web site that is just the opposite the first thing you see is a standard informative page, once again proving that their market strategies are diversified. Coke markets to mainstream adult America, probably because of Coke’s popular alcohol mixing capabilities and because they are a more “classic” and withstanding company.
Stock quotes and market research shows that over the past 5 years while Coca-Cola has been at a plateau(except in 2000, when they took a huge hit, most likely due to Pepsi’s new marketing strategy), Pepsi-Cola is on a steady incline(quotemarningstar.com). This proves that their marketing scheme is working. Coke who markets to mainstream adult America just isn’t getting the new customers that Pepsi is, perhaps they should start targeting the younger generation as well as the adults, or they will end up dying out with their loyal consumers. Besides the fact that children today have deep pockets, there are other reasons to target a younger crowd, one

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