Pepsi takes a page from Coca-Cola's 'Share a Coke' campaign with food-focused twist

Pepsi has rolled out its summer arsenal with the 'Share a Pepsi' campaign, which sees the brand's familiar packaging adorned with names of food items such as burgers, wings, and pizza.

The new campaign is an extension of Pepsi's larger 'Food Deserves Pepsi' initiative from 2024, where the cola giant is positioning its beverage as the perfect companion for meals.

This new food-focused 'Share a Pepsi' approach reads very much like a playful riposte to Coca-Cola's popular 'Share a Coke' campaign, which has been putting names of actual people on bottles since its debut in 2011.

In March 2025, Coca-Cola brought the campaign back from the archives, this time with Gen Z firmly in its crosshairs. The resurrected campaign promised to fuse "digital and IRL experiences" with enhanced shareability and customisation options, rolling out across more than 120 countries. 

For a generation that's hardly short of choices, Coca-Cola positioned the campaign as a nostalgic reminder that meaningful connections can spring from the simplest gestures, like sharing a personalised can.

Pepsi's food-centric alternative suggests the brand has been taking notes, but with a distinctly different conclusion. Rather than competing for space in consumers' personal identity, they've aimed squarely for the stomach, a rather more democratic target, one might argue.

The campaign marks a strategic shift towards meal occasions, with Pepsi betting that consumers are more likely to bond over a shared love of favourite food items than the novelty of finding their name emblazoned on a bottle. 

As part of its larger 'Food Deserves Pepsi' campaign, the brand has had several other marketing activities luring cola lovers into the fold of Pepsi, such as Pepsi Chase Cars from 2024, where the brand's agents chased down pizza delivery drivers to add Pepsi to their orders.

Just last month, the brand unveiled its 'BBQ Crashers' campaign, where a group of 'Pepsi Crashers' infiltrated a cookout to replace the cola drinks there with Pepsi. 

This latest bout of creative sparring isn't the first time these cola titans have locked horns in recent months. In India, just ahead of the Indian Premier League season in March, Pepsi reignited the fizzy drink wars with its audacious 'Anytime is Pepsi Time' campaign—a not-so-subtle dig at rival Coca-Cola's "Halftime" ad campaign for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 tournament earlier.

The message was deliciously clear: why settle for intervals when you could own the entire match?

The perpetual dance between these brands has always thrived on this sort of strategic mimicry-meets-differentiation, with each seemingly incapable of allowing the other the final word.

It's a rivalry that keeps marketing departments busy and consumers mildly amused, as each brand attempts to out-clever the other whilst maintaining a solid market share.