Diet Pepsi must be struggling

Has anyone else noticed the recent marketing campaign Diet Pepsi has rolled out? Their entire campaign is based around the statistic that "56% of diet cola drinkers think Diet Pepsi has more cola taste than Diet Coke." (Check out the campaign at dietpepsi.com) Pepsi must really be losing to Coke in the soft drink market if this is what they are using. I have some problems with the whole thing:

First, the obvious: 56% is barely more than half. No matter how you slice it or what type of humor you use to try and reinforce it, that statistic is weak. It could even be irrelevant. How many people were surveyed? What was the confidence interval of the tests? What's the "give-or-take" on that statistic? Not a good base.

Second, since when do diet cola drinkers know what cola tastes like? I bet they have a damn good idea of what diet cola tastes like, but being diet cola drinkers, they probably don't drink regular cola. If they're anything like my dad, they would say that regular cola is gross ("too sweet" I believe is his rationale) no matter if it's Coke or Pepsi. I don't ask wine drinkers what kind of beer they prefer, and I don't ask diet cola drinkers what kind of cola they prefer.

I like the look of the ads, the way they have animated the text and made everything really crisp and clean, some of them are even kind of clever, but they should use all this with another message. The 56% thing just isn't doing it for me. It seems like a blatant attempt to capture some tiny bit of market share from Coke (which is actuallt very valuable in the soda industry) by taking tiny cheap shots. I don't think I've seen Coke even mention Pepsi in an ad ever. They know their brand is what sells, not the taste of the cola (See New Coke). If I were Pepsi's brand manager, I would stop sending out the message that Coke is winning. That's all I got from these ads when I saw them. Maybe a little more offense and a little less defense would be a good strategy at this point. Do something inventive, something creative, something that wins awards.

Something Coke would do.