07/05/2006
The cola kings, Coca-Cola and Pepsico, recently submitted another advertising claims dispute to the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division for review and recommendations. It wasn't, though, a dispute between "the real thing" or the "Pepsi generation," but one that involved Pepsico's subsidiary's Gatorade and Coca Cola's Powerade Option.
Specifically, Gatorade challenged Powerade Option's advertising and label claims, including a claim of "80% fewer calories than Gatorade" and the statement that "[n]ow you can replace your body's lost fluids and electrolytes without putting back the extra calories you may not want."
In support of its challenge, Gatorade submitted the results of a national survey it had conducted, showing that 34 percent of respondents believed, after being shown a Powerade Option label, that calories were both a disadvantage for Gatorade and an advantage for Powerade Option.
Gatorade's position was that Powerade Option attains its lower calorie levels by reducing carbohydrates to 0.8%, a level it claims is well below what is appropriate for a sports drink. (Although NAD noted that no FDA or industry-accepted definition of "sports drink" exists, both companies refer to their product as such.) Its own product, though higher in calories, contains 14 grams of carbohydrates and 110 mg. of sodium, which, Gatorade maintained, have been established as optimally formulated. Gatorade also maintained that, as Coca-Cola was aware, Gatorade's calories come from the type and level of carbohydrates that provide the two critical elements of a sports drink: "refueling" athletes and helping to reduce muscle fatigue, and stimulating the absorption of fluids. Powerade Option, it held, contains neither the type nor level of carbohydrates, nor the level of electrolytes that make Gatorade an efficacious sports drink, but is merely a vitamin-enhanced water beverage.
Despite Powerade Option's reduction in carbohydrates and the resulting reduction in calories, Powerade Option's own website, said Gatorade, had adopted the training tips of the International Olympics Committee that commercial "sports drinks" with about a 4-8% carbohydrate content "allow carbohydrate and fluid levels to be met simultaneously in most events."
Furthermore, in the previous NAD proceeding, Coca-Cola had boasted that its Powerade (as distinguished from the Powerade Option that was the subject of the current challenge), introduced some 10 years ago, "provides 33% more energy-yielding calories" than Gatorade.
Gatorade argued that Powerade Option does not have an "appropriate level of electrolytes, or an appropriate balance between fluids, carbohydrates and electrolytes" to be comparable in any way to Gatorade. It also contended that Coca-Cola had not disclosed "material or significant limits of the comparison," thereby taking advantage of consumers' lack of scientific knowledge as to the need for balanced contents in a sports drink to mislead them. That is, strenuous exercisers who believe, from viewing the Powerade Option bottle, that low calories are a benefit of its product and a disadvantage of Gatorade, may act on such reactions to their detriment.
NAD's decision in this matter stated that Powerade Option's absence of carbohydrates, which "provide a key benefit . . ." was a "material difference between the products that should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed in any advertising comparing the two products." NAD recommended that Coca-Cola modify its advertising "to avoid conveying the general, unqualified message that the carbohydrates/calories in Gatorade are unwanted and/or unneeded by all consumers."
Coca-Cola's response, although disagreeing that its truthful calorie comparison may confuse consumers, agreed to take NAD's recommendation into account in its future comparative advertising.
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