THE TOP 10 BUSİNESS RİVALRİES İN HİSTORY

1. COKE VS. PEPSI
Competition, like love, can make us do crazy things. How else to explain Coke’s disastrous effort to tweak its famous formula and introduce New Coke, a sweeter variation on the classic billion-dollar recipe? During the “Cola Wars” in the 1980s, the Atlanta-based company was losing market share to rival Pepsi and feeling the pressure to win back consumers swayed by Pepsi’s famous taste test “experiments,” TV advertisements in which blindfolded consumers voted in favor of Pepsi over Coke.

The company apologized to the 400,000 customers who wrote letters of complaint, and shipped its old formula to stores as “Coca-Cola Classic.”
New Coke flopped, and Pepsi sales briefly skyrocketed. But Coke’s response to the crisis offers a lesson in managing innovation gone wrong. The company apologized to the 400,000 customers who wrote letters of complaint, shipped its old formula to stores as “Coca-Cola Classic,” and gradually reduced New Coke’s distribution. By the time the much-maligned new formula disappeared for good, consumers had all but forgotten that it had ever existed.

Today the pecking order for the major soda brands remains remarkably sticky: Coca-Cola on top, and Diet Coke and Pepsi vying for second place. The challenge is that Americans are drinking less soda, with volume dropping by 1.4 billion cases since 2004, and more of nearly everything else–energy drinks, green juices, flavored waters, artisanal iced teas. In these new categories, Coke has yet to replicate the brand magic that has sustained its sales for decades.

Pepsi, seeing an opportunity, has announced major investments in healthier alternatives to its existing portfolio of products, dominated by empty calories and crave-worthy sweet and salty flavors. The company that succeeds in satisfying our health concerns–and our taste buds–will rake in the profits.

2. MARVEL COMICS VS. DC COMICS
In 1996, competing comic companies Marvel and DC (Detective Comics) issued a joint series in which each publisher’s characters engaged in a series of duels. Aquaman harnesses a whale to take down Namor, Elektra sends Catwoman flying off a building–with each battle, the intensity seems to drive the publishers farther apart. But Marvel and DC had other ideas: In the final story, characters from both universes join forces–in some cases even merging identities, as Batman and Wolverine became Dark Claw–in order to save the day. From rivals to partners: The series ends on a conciliatory note.

Indeed, despite the superhero firepower filling pages, the rivalry between Marvel and DC has largely been a civil one–Marvel even refers to DC as “Distinguished Competition.” Both companies seem to acknowledge the importance of having a worthy competitor, and both have benefited from Hollywood’s interest in bringing their characters to the big screen. Support from corporate owners has facilitated those transfers, with Disney acquiring Marvel in 2009 and DC becoming a part of the Time Warner conglomerate in 1989.

Now their fates are irrevocably tied to Hollywood, with DC looking ahead to the next Batman movie, starring Ben Affleck, and Marvel securing the rights to once again publish Star Wars titles, in advance of the franchise’s new film. Back in the 1990s, Marvel nearly went bankrupt. Today, it’s riding high, with more movies and revenue than its longtime adversary.


3. MCDONALD’S VS. BURGER KING
The rivalry between McDonald’s and Burger King used to come down to one thing: the hamburger. Which company’s burger was cheaper? Better tasting? More convenient? During the ’50s and ’60s, the golden age of car culture and fast food, the burger chains’ menus told a story of moves and counter-moves in their pursuit of consumers’ loyalty.

First came McDonald’s 15-cent hamburger. Then came Burger King’s 37-cent Whopper, an attempt to compete on quality rather than price. Soon McDonald’s realized it needed a mammoth burger of its own, and introduced the Big Mac. More recently, as consumers’ tastes have shifted, the companies have been arguing over which restaurant’s chicken nuggets contain higher-quality meat.

Indeed, the challenge facing these two rivals used to be simple: Whichever won the burger won the war. But consumers’ stated preference for healthier options (even if they still order a quarter pounder with cheese) has upended that dynamic and left both companies struggling to define their identities while still feeding millions of families every day, McDonald’s at its 14,300 U.S. locations and Burger King at its 7,400 in the U.S. and Canada.


4. FORD VS. GM


5. DUNKIN’ DONUTS VS. STARBUCKS


6. UPS VS. FEDEX


7. NIKE VS. REEBOK


8. AIRBUS VS. BOEING


9. HASBRO VS. MATTEL


10. AT&T VS. MCI

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