ELI5: Why does Coca-cola still advertise?

[u/bigdubsy]

Why do companies that have seemingly maxed out on brand recognition still spend so much money on advertising? There is not a person watching TV who doesn't know about Pepsi/Coke. So it occurs to me that they cannot increase the awareness of their product or bring new customers to the product. Without creating new customers, isn't advertisement a waste of money?

I understand that they need to advertise new products, but oftentimes, it's not a new product featured in a TV commercial.

The big soda companies are the best example I can think of.

Edit: Answered. Thanks everyone!

Edit 2: Thanks again to everybody for the discussions! I learned alot more than I expected. If we weren't all strangers on the internet, I'd buy everyone a Pepsi.

[u/doughudlud]

No. There are some things that are natural when it comes to social interaction. Tone of voice, body language, facial expressions. These are all things a child is born with. They can be tweaked or overridden by a conscious mind, or broken in the cases of mental disorders(e.g. Autism, Schizophrenia, etc.). I have Aspergers, and I still have trouble with some social situations because i can not distinguish facial expressions. It wasn't untill a few years ago when i could differentiate different aspects of body language. Almost all the social rules that you or other neurotipical people could just watch once and get it, I had to watch countless times before i got a hint of what was going on, if I was lucky. I ended up making a friend who was willing to verbally tell me and explain different social rules and actions. And this was after I graduated HS, which was a living hell for me. I had almost no friends, and none of them were from school. Fortunately I was never picked on because I sent one kid to the hospital when he started a fight with me. Often I seriously thought about suicide. my life was damn lonely. It really wasn't until my sophomore year of college that I met this friend. After I met him, the world opened up to me and my life had meaning again. I still struggle, but it is better and I started a HS social skills club for kids that are like I was. So yes, you may have to "learn" your skills, but you have no fucking clue what it is like to have to really learn how to operate in society.

[u/doughudlud → u/[deleted]]

I'm trying to find the research paper that I read on this, but both Pub-Med and Google are being finicky about their search terms. I will try to paraphrase what I read. Babies are born with a hardwired interest in faces and facial expressions. One week after they have the visual acuity to even focus on a face (7 weeks), they are able to determine facial expressions. They don't just straight up learn things like that. They are born with an idea of how emotions work. Not to mention that they are born, and this was 100% proven, able to determine their mothers voice, and can tell with a certain degree of accuracy their fathers voice(assuming that he was around the mother often during the pregnancy), and they can react fairly well to changes in tone of voice. If I can manage to find the paper I will post it.

And sorry that I got uppity in my last post. It's a big button for me that I'm trying to work on. I shouldn't have gotten so hostile. My bad.

[u/[deleted] → u/doughudlud]

assuming that he was around the mother often during the pregnancy

The father being around the baby does not change the baby's DNA. I would bet that the baby in the womb can hear the mother and father talking during the late stages of pregnancy. This is what expansionpak meant by conditioning and learning.