And good god do they need it; I can tell my boss's boss is not the same since Covid since he can't walk around and badger us about the recent sports team event.
But they do (and they sponsored F1 for a long time after most advertising was banned) so advertising must have some impact on their sales.
What does it mean? Do you think this person is lying about the taste for some nefarious reason? Do you think they have some condition where they feel sweeter drinks as more bitter? Where and when did you last check? What are the differences between the last check and the previous one?
Interestingly Pepsi includes both HFCS and sugar, so what the OP describes as "too sweet" might actually be a flavor palate that lacks that bit of sugar in addition to HFCS. (The exact mix is not clear, though Pepsi contains more "CARAMEL COLOR" than sugar so it seems suspiciously like the Pepsi is nutritionally the same as Coke with an extra 2g of sugar in addition to 39g of HFCS.)
qualia BTFO
The person you're responding to may have had a similar lifetime experience and that's why they commented on it. Likely not nefarious, simply an observation on something unexpected.
everything wrong with the world, capitalism, climate change, etc can be framed as a game theory coordination dilemma. How do you get people to cooperate at scale in an anti-fragile way (not exploitable)? Solve that and we are post-scarcity
Firstly,we must reduce the stakes of anyone in any given domain. This can be done by (partially) tying wealth to employment and reducing inequality. Indeed, in a hypothetical society where most companies are mostly worker owned, then the owners of the company do not have that much of an incentive in hiring climate change, because ultimately if the company folded and they changed domains they would not lose that much, and the cost of climate change is bigger relative to their stake since everyone's stake is lower.
Another part of the answer will be government, unavoidably. Hopefully, a less unequal economy that has a lot more worker ownership will allow for much more democratic government, as it will be much harder for any individual to have the resources to exploit government directly or indirectly.
Also even if you somehow made the worker economy (which seems to have become less likely since the end of literal cottage industries) given productivity's linkage to capital investment that would still result in resources to exploit a government. It is called a voting bloc. Coal miners don't want to give up mining coal despite the negative health effects and other mining jobs being available. The uncomfortable truth is 'a more democratic government' and 'a government that does everything you specifically want' are not compatible.
I agree that a democratic government won't do everything that should be done, but it's the least worst option we have. The best way to reduce corruption is to attack the class system.
Many people associate 8oz glass bottles of Coke with Christmas. Fizz commercials are part of the movie theater experience. A happy meal is paired with a Coke.
Pepsi usually has a different message; they used to peddle taste, but usually try to assert that cool people drink Pepsi.
And they fell into that by accident, after the infamous retreat from New Coke.
Turned out people are motivated in non obvious ways. Diet Coke tastes gross, but hardly anyone has heard of Diet Dr Pepper.
No one drinks it because most people think even regular Dr. Pepper is gross, but Diet Dr. Pepper is nationally recognized as a household name in the US because of the extensive advertising that they do for it. "Diet Dr. Pepper tastes like regular Dr. Pepper." Hardly anyone drinks it, but pretty much everyone has heard of it.
Same as Mellow Yellow a couple decades ago. They advertised it extensively and when they used to give away free drinks under the cap it was always free Mellow Yellow. But relatively few people actually liked it. That didn't mean we hadn't heard of it.