From Apple to Nike: the brands that fight the most online – and who's winning

Brand rivalries have been around for years, with the most obvious examples including the likes of Coca-Cola vs Pepsi and McDonald's vs Burger King. Often playing (with varying degrees of success) for laughs, brands often take pot-shots at their rivals, and the rise of social media has only made this easier.

Now, e-commerce website Strike Digital has taken it upon itself to embark on a study into the UK's 'top brand wars' in order to find out who's slagging off who – and who's winning. To conduct the analysis, Strike Digital used a variety of data points including social followers and engagement, site traffic, NPS score and more.

Of Pepsi vs Coke, Strike declares the latter the winner – but not by as much as you might think when considering how desperate Pepsi's Coke-trolling ads can look.

"This rivalry has been going on since the 19th century when Pepsi launched in 1898, and this escalated in the 1970s and 1980s known as the ‘Cola wars’," Strike says. But to put this over 125-year battle to rest, we can reveal that the winners are Coca Cola but not by much, Coke won at 54.41%, with Pepsi less than 10% behind at 45.59%. Pepsi seems to be doing better on Tiktok with 6.3m likes versus Coke’s 3.7m and their Instagram engagement surpassed Coke’s at 0.39% versus 0.05% but Coke swept the floor when it came to Instagram followers (356,000 vs 53,400), site traffic (60,700 vs 13,800) and they won the brand awareness by 1%.

Meanwhile, in what will come as a surprise to nobody, Apple is winning the social media war against Samsung. "Apple is the clear winner with 60.38% versus Samsung’s 39.62%. Samsung saw a win when it came to TikTok likes (18M vs 9.9M) and surprisingly won on brand awareness by 2% but Apple knocked it out of the park in key areas such as NPS score (48 vs 16), Instagram followers (33.8M vs 1.9M) and having more than double the number of stores (40 vs 19)."

The study also finds that BMW is winning over Audi, while Nike is beating Adidas. "To truly stand out in today’s competitive e-commerce landscape," Strike shared in a press release accompanying the stufy, "brands need to combine a strong social media strategy with exceptional customer engagement. It’s not just about having the most followers; it’s about creating meaningful interactions and building brand loyalty."

One result that isn't surprising to see is that of McDonald's vs Burger King. The burger pedlars have been at war for years – but with one's ads clearly better than the other's, we always knew who'd win that one.