New Coke

Or Coca Cola's biggest flop ever, bar none.

In the mid-80s Coke was losing ground to Pepsi. That's not to say Coca Cola was doing abdly. Sales of their product line were good, but the flagship drink, Coke, was losing ground to Pepsico's flagship drink. Something had to be done.

Something was.

In brief, Coca Cola altered the secret recipe of Coke to make it sweeter and more Pepsi-like. That in itself wasn't a bad idea. The bad idea was to replace Coke for the new concoction. BTW, the product was never called "New Coke" officially. Officially it was still just "Coke." But the can carried the word "NEW" prominently above the Coke logo, so people began to call it "New Coke."

In blind taste tests, the drink did very well against Pepsi and against the Old Coke. People liked it. A lot. They loved it. But when it was visibly sold as New Coke (unofficially), few people wanted it. This should have been a sign for Coca Cola to change course. Of course, as the plans were to replace Coke entirely, and arrangments had been made for this, it wouldn't have been easy or cheap, but it was a sign to change course.

What did happen was that people all over America turned on Coke. Sales of the New (unofficially) Coke were poor and people even abnded to gether to petition the ocmpany to bring back the old recipe. While stocks of Old Coke lasted, some people bought them in large quantities to have a stockpile of their favorite drink. Overseas many people amde much of still having the Original Coke and not a newfangled concoction no one wanted. This effectively killed New Coke in, oh, 90% of the overseas market before it was even introduced.

So in the end Coca Cola had no choice but to Change course. They brought abck the old recipe and marketed it as "Classic Coke." For a while both Cokes co-existed, but eventually the "Classic" label was dropped and production of the "New" brand was discontinued. Some time later it was re-introduced as "Coke II," but that was a flop, too.

When the debacle was "over," some people commented that the reborn Old Coke dind't taste quite like they remembered. Coke swore up and down it was the exact same recipe.

It wasn't, quite. The syrup was the same, the carbonated water was the same (hard to change that), but the sweetener wasn't the same. Coca Cola took advantage of the switch and began to sweeten Coke with high fructose corn syrup rather than cane sugar.

In the end Coke sales rose. This fact brought in conspiracy theories about how the New Coke mess had been a clever marketing ploy, but that's little more than paranoid nonsense, or wishful thinking (depending on how you view things). After all, While it gained market share, Coca Cola also lost a bundle, what with switching recipes and all, not to mention losing a long-running negotiations with bottlers over the premium prices for Coke syrup. The switch from sugar was most likley a cost-cutting measure.

The lesson is clear: do not mess with a successful brand too much.

In latter years when both Coke and Pepsi launched "transparent" cola drinks, they did not substitute their leading drink for the "clear" one, but rather marketed a different brand. There was Crystal Pepsi, for example, alongside with regular Pepsi. Or even alter Coke came up with Coke Zero alongside Diet Coke.

Not that everyone's learned the lesson, of course.

Quote: Nareed

The switch from sugar was most likley a cost-cutting measure.
Not that everyone's learned the lesson, of course.

The company's rebound from this disaster was nothing short of a miracle (hence the persistent belief that the whole thing must have been planned).
Yet it's a very understandable miracle once you think about it. It took the loss of the beverage people had grown up with and fallen in love over to remind them how much it meant to them.

As for the debacle's being a deliberate marketing ploy, Donald Keough said: "Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."

Quote: Pacomartin

"Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."

They were certainly not that smart.

In all the reading I've done, I found nothing about market research regarding the repalcement of Coke with a different product. They did consider launching New Coke under a different brand, without replacing Coke altogether, but decided agaisnt it.

I have nothing to add, except that is probably my favorite article out of any I have read in the last few weeks.

This is not relevant, but I LOVED Crystal Pepsi, most other people thought it sucked, apparently.

Quote: Mission146

I have nothing to add, except that is probably my favorite article out of any I have read in the last few weeks.

Thanks.

I forgot to mention that major US networks interrupted their regular programming to announce Coca Cola was bringing back the Old Coke. Maybe because these days major US networks are increasingly irrelevant. But back then that was big news.

Quote:

This is not relevant, but I LOVED Crystal Pepsi, most other people thought it sucked, apparently.

I don't recall every trying it. But it was pretty much the same as regular Pepsi, only without the caramel coloring

The one I kind of liked was Coca Cola Blak, which was a mix of Coke and Coffee. Kind of, because it was too sweet for my taste. I did like Vanilla Diet Coke, and Diet Coke Lime.