Disclaimer – it didn’t impact me enough to make me switch from my American Express Platinum of Visa Signature cards.

I was trying to get at game-changing campaigns.

Budweiser has had many effective campaigns (effective at reaching their stated or presumed goals), but being number 1 for so long, it’s hard for them to have the kind of campaign I’m trying to get at that, like “Where’s the Beef” or “Will it Blend” or “Mac vs. PC” or “Eat Mor Chikin” really had a huge impact on a company (and in most cases, an entire industry), and was used successfully for a number of years. Of course, with that model in mind, my Coke example just keeps getting worse and Pepsi’s “Taste Test Challenge” or “Pepsi Generation” is the much more relevant example.

With this now explicit, are you comfortable with my resistance, and better yet, do you have an even better example than the ones I’ve listed?

If you’re looking for directly attributable calls to action, I would point to the current series of Bud Delivery Man ads, where he gets customers to pike Budweiser over alternative beers. But that’s a different type of ad all together . . . we won’t be talking about it in 10 years like we do the others.

Well, you did say arguably, and I’m of the mind that Coke stumbled into the solution of the Pepsi taste test.

To begin, I agree that Coke it’s the Real Thing was a great campaign, but not as far reaching as you say. It was not in response to the Pepsi Challenge — it came out in 1970. Remember the Christmas singing ad? That classic TV spot debuted for Coca-Cola in 1971 – while featuring the slogan, “I’d like to buy the world a coke” it threw in the previous year’s slogan, “It’s the Real Thing” (In the Christmas ad, “I’d like to teach the world to sing” you may remember the throw-in line “It’s the real thing’ in between stanzas).

Pepsi started the taste test in 1974 and broke them out nationally in 1975. Coke had no answer other that to ignore for a long time. There was Coke adds life in 1976. Then have a Coke and a smile in 1979. Then finally Coke started to address the growing problem of lost market share with the ever-subtle… Coke is it in 1982 (I remember thinking how presumptive bordering on needy that phrase seemed to me).

Then two things happened — the country trended far more conservative — from Reagan, to (ironically for Pepsi)) Alex P. Keaton, to just a general push-back to the 70’s. That, combined with the failed new Coke experiment, resulting in a huge outcry for Coke Classic kept coke in the forefront of everyone’s mind. The outcry was the best PR Coke – arguably – ever had. and, it was free! (I always wanted to think some genius at Coke had planned that New coke/Coke Classic thing from the very beginning — what they lost in money for the beginning and end of a new flavor, they more than made up in regaining market share and utter dominance).