原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU1MDQwNTgzMg==&mid=2247491875&idx=1&sn=035b79a079ab583c0eb7bd26437d80a8&chksm=fba3b284ccd43b92dafa6a16da677cf80ccbf89e58cd5ff37c7a01ef94e87f2bd1ff78dbe21b#rd
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Megan, 女,外企民工,好想一身都是月
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可乐大战
英文部分选自经济学人20200925期Business版块
Cola wars
可乐大战
Fire-starter
纵火者
Donald Kendall added marketing sparkle to the soft-drinks industry
唐纳德·肯德尔(Donald Kendall)为软饮料行业增加了营销亮点
注:
百事公司前 CEO 唐纳德 · 肯德尔(Donald Kendall)于 9 月 19 日去世,享年 99 岁。
“Rock and roller cola wars, I can’t take it any more!” cried Billy Joel in his chart-topping song from 1989, “We didn’t start the fire”. He had had enough of the intense marketing battle between America’s fizzy-drinks behemoths. As the underdog, PepsiCo had stunned its bigger rival, Coca-Cola, by signing Michael Jackson, the era’s biggest musical star, to promote its brand in a record-setting $5m deal.
“摇滚明星,可乐大战,我承受不了了!”比利·乔尔(Billy Joel)在他1989年榜单榜首的歌曲《不是我们点的火》中嘶吼道。他已经受够了美国碳酸饮料巨头之间激烈的市场竞争。当时,处下风的竞争者,百事公司(PepsiCo)为推广其品牌,以创纪录的500万美元(折合3400万人民币)签约当时最大牌的音乐明星迈克尔·杰克逊(Michael Jackson)。此举令竞争力更强的可口可乐(Coca-Cola)大为震惊。
注:“We didn’t start the fire” : A song by Billy Joel that alludes to headline events from March 1949 (Joel was born on May 9 of that year) to 1989, when the song was released on his album Storm Front. The song was a number-one hit in the US, and often parodied since.
The cola wars became a cultural phenomenon. Credit for that goes to Donald Kendall, PepsiCo’s legendary former boss, who died on September 19th aged 99. A gifted salesman, he rose quickly through the ranks from his start on the bottling line to become the firm’s top sales and marketing executive at the tender age of 35. Seven years later he was named CEO. In 1974 he injected a dose of fizzy capitalism into the Soviet Union, which allowed Pepsi to become the first Western product to be legally sold behind the iron curtain. By the time he stepped down as boss in 1986, PepsiCo’s sales had shot up nearly 40-fold, to $7.6bn. His legacy continues to shape the industry.
可乐大战已经成为一种文化现象。这要归功于一位传奇人物——百事可乐公司前任老板唐纳德·肯德尔,他于9月19日去世,享年99岁。他是一名天赋异禀的推销员,从灌装线工人迅速晋升为金牌销售,年仅35岁便升任市场总监。7年后,他被任命为首席执行官。1974年,他为苏联注入了一剂“碳酸”资本主义,使百事成为第一个在铁幕后合法销售的西方产品。他1986年卸任老板时,百事的销售额已爆增近40倍,达76亿美元(折合520亿人民币)。他任职期间留下的遗产仍在影响整个产业。
Mr Kendall offered a mix of strategic vision, principled leadership and marketing flair. Two years after taking charge he acquired Frito-Lay, a leading purveyor of snacks, giving PepsiCo an advantage from diversification that persists to this day. PepsiCo’s revenues last year of $67bn dwarfed Coca-Cola’s $37bn in sales. Decades before Black Lives Matter he named African-Americans to top jobs, making PepsiCo the first big American firm to do so—staring down racists including the Ku Klux Klan, which organised a boycott.
肯德尔集战略眼光、有原则的领导力与营销才能于一身。接手公司两年后,他收购了一家领先的零食供应商菲多利,这使百事公司在多元化发展中赢得竞争优势,这种优势延续至今。百事公司去年670亿美元(折合4600亿人民币)的营业收入,令可口可乐的370亿美元(折合2500亿人民币)相形见绌。早在BLM发起的几十年前,他就任命非裔美国人担任高层职位,此举使百事成为第一家采取此类做法的美国大公司——这是对3K党等种族主义者的蔑视,为此,3K党还组织了一场抵制活动。
注:
BLM: #BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
But his masterstroke was the all-out marketing blitz against Coca-Cola, long the global market leader in non-alcoholic beverages. The two firms had competed for decades, but they mostly fought low-grade battles. Mr Kendall changed that, by forcing both companies into an advertising arms race. In 1975 Coca-Cola spent around $25m on advertising and PepsiCo some $18m. By 1985 those figures had shot up to $72m and $57m, respectively. In 1995 Pepsi outspent Coke by $112m to $82m.
不过,他的妙招是以全面的营销攻势迅速围剿可口可乐,后者长期以来一直是全球非酒精饮料市场的龙头老大。这两家公司已经竞争了几十年,但他们大多在低级别上比拼。肯德尔通过迫使两家公司进入广告“军备竞赛”状态,扭转了这一局面。1975年,可口可乐在广告上花掉了差不多2500万美元(折合1.7亿人民币),百事可乐花掉了大约1800万美元(折合1.2亿人民币)。1985年,两家广告费分别飙升至7200万美元(折合4.9亿人民币)和5700万美元(折合3.9亿人民币)。到1995年,百事可乐花掉了1.12亿美元(折合7.6亿人民币)超过了可口可乐的8200万美元(折合5.6亿人民币)。
This was a risky gambit for both cola rivals. But it paid off in two ways. First, it helped fizzy drinks win a greater “share of throat” (a term coined by Roberto Goizueta, a former boss of Coca-Cola, who died in 1997). They went from 12.4% of American beverage consumption in 1970 to 22.4% in 1985. And though Coca-Cola maintained its lead in that period, with over a third of the market, PepsiCo’s share shot up from 20% to a peak of over 30% in the 1990s. Last year carbonated-drinks sales totalled $77bn in America, and over $312bn globally. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo remain dominant.
这种战术对两家可乐企业而言都是十分冒险的,但同时也带来了两大好处。首先,这种战术帮助碳酸饮料在饮料市场拿下了更多的“喉咙份额”(这是可口可乐前董事长罗伯特·戈依苏埃塔(Roberto Goizueta)发明的概念,这位前董事长于1997年逝世),1970年碳酸饮料在美国饮料消费总量中仅占12.4%,到1985年这一比例扩大到22.4%。至20世纪90年代,虽然可口可乐依然独占鳌头,占据整个市场的三分之一,不过百事可乐所占市场份额也飞速上涨,从20%升至峰值30%多。去年美国碳酸饮料总销量高达770亿美元,全球总销量高达3120亿美元,而可口可乐和百事可乐的地位依旧无法撼动。
注:
1. Pay off(Macamillan English Dictionary 2nd Edition)
2. share of throat is a beverage industry term that refers to the proportion of the world’s beverage consumption produced by a single company. The term was originally coined by Coca-Cola as “throat share”, in order to measure how much of the world’s beverages were theirs, but is now commonly referred to as share of throat.
The second way that the cola wars benefited both companies was by turning them into “the world’s best marketers”, observes Kaumil Gajrawala of Credit Suisse, a bank. Today a decades-long obsession with cut-price volume growth has been replaced by a focus on revenues and profits.
瑞士信贷银行(Credit Suisse)的考米尔·格拉瓦拉(Kaumil Gajrawala)认为,可乐之战给两家公司带来的第二大好处在于它令两家公司都蜕变为“全球最好的营销企业”。几十年来,企业沉迷于降价竞争市场份额,如今则专注于收入和利润之争。
PepsiCo in particular has relinquished some of the soft-drinks market, where its share has fallen back down to a quarter (see chart 1). But its marketing magic continues to sparkle, even if it is deployed to sell less sugary alternatives such as bottled water, coffee and energy drinks to health-conscious consumers. And over the past 40 years PepsiCo has returned nearly a third more to shareholders than Coca-Cola has (see chart 2).
百事可乐尤其如此,放弃了一部分市场份额下降到25%(如图1所示)的软饮市场,但即便只是面向关注健康的消费者销售像瓶装水、咖啡和能量饮料等低糖替代品,它的营销魔法也从未失效。在过去40年里,百事可乐为其股东带来的收益比可口可乐高出近三分之一。(如图2所示)。
In many industries a cosy duopoly retards innovation and harms consumers. The happy outcome of the cola wars has been the exact opposite. As Mr Kendall himself observed, “If there wasn’t a Coca-Cola, we would have had to invent one, and they would have had to invent Pepsi.”
对于许多产业而言,两大巨头的稳定垄断都会延缓创新的脚步、损害消费者利益,可乐之战的结果则恰好相反,皆大欢喜。正如肯德尔先生自己所说的那样:“如果没有可口可乐,我们也要创造一个,而可口可乐则要创造一个百事可乐。”
翻译组:
Hikali,女,准爱岛异术家,用力生活
Lavender, MTI在读,不会做模特的追星女孩不是好的话剧爱好者
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Elle, 女,靠着土豆腿前行的小土豆
Hannah,女,教书匠,经济学人粉丝
Very,男,电气民工,经济学人资浅爱好者
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Forest,女,自由职业,爱树的人
竞争在哪里?
此文很短。感觉还没有读几行,行文已匆匆至末尾。
回看两段,脑袋里就冒出这个问题,哪里有最激烈的竞争?
通常我们都觉得在有很多企业的行业中,竞争是最激烈的。而行业的自由进出是保证业内竞争的必要条件。但是如果行业内企业数量很少,且存在着很大的进入障碍,就一定缺乏竞争吗?
并非一定如此,单纯考察市场结构其实不足以说明竞争的强度。有些情况下,如果市场中只有几个大供应商,也就是被称为寡头垄断的情况,竞争可能会格外激烈。最容易想到的可能是石油市场了,虽然勾结常有,但是竞争经常很激烈。只有少数几个企业的行业内竞争,竞争有时候是割喉式的。经济学家们认为真正的竞争是对消费者有利的竞争,这些厂商在价格、非价格方面、广告与市场方面以及创新和新产品开发方面展开充分有效的竞争。
而肯德尔先生所言之“如果没有可口可乐,我们也要创造一个,而可口可乐则要创造一个百事可乐。”不禁让人想到另一个行业,芯片。英特尔和AMD大概也是这样看待对方,保持着一个竞争者的存在,能帮助自己进步。
不过如此巨额的广告费,好像不够有效率,让人想起兰德公司的“一美元拍卖”博弈。这个比赛对于两方来说都无路可退,因为参与两方都陷入了一种两难困境:越是参与便支出越多,而不继续参与则目前的损失巨大。
另一个问题就是对消费者当前有益的利益和所谓长远的公共利益的问题,这一问题让人想到目前的科技公司,它们在变得越来越大的过程中提供了看似日益廉价的互联网服务,但是是否提供了越来越大的公共利益,这是值得关注和需要研究的问题。
此记。
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