The Biggest Marketing Disaster Ever or Pure Genius?

Little bit of history on this one, back in the early 80's you'll remember the Pepsi Challenge commercials. This was a hugely successful marketing campaign that was slowly taking a significant amount of Coke's market share after dominating the industry forever. Coke was on downward slide and needed to do something... In attempts to stop this loss of market share Coke decided to dump the original Coke and introduced New Coke which was pretty much a big failure and they continued to lose market share. A very short time later they reintroduced the original formula as "Classic Coke". The rest is history, the marketing campaign for this erased much of the gains Pepsi made and they haven't looked back since. New Coke? I dunno do they make it anymore?

There has been speculation that the reintroduction of Classic Coke was in the plans all along and the very short time span between the introduction of New Coke and the reintroduction of Classic certainty supports that. So the question is was this move pure genius or did they step in it? I will tell you one thing, if it was the plan that is one slick move.

Nobody is that smart.

"New Coke" was essentially Pepsi. I think they figured that so many people were switching, they must like the taste.

When they switched back, I think all the Coke fans, such as myself, thought they need to buy as much as humanly possibly or they might lose it again.

I have 4 cases in the house right now.

Can't be too careful. Don't want to run out.

Richard S. wrote:New Coke? I dunno do they make it anymore?

I don't think so but if they reintroduced it for a short time imagine how much they would sell. I'd buy some.

jpete wrote:Nobody is that smart.

I wouldn't agree with that, I do not think it's too much of a stretch for someone to think of it. The bigger issue is the enormous risk involved and convincing others to go along with it... I mean you'd have to some really big ones to try it.

Richard S. wrote:There has been speculation that the reintroduction of Classic Coke was in the plans all along and the very short time span between the introduction of New Coke and the reintroduction of Classic certainty supports that. So the question is was this move pure genius or did they step in it? I will tell you one thing, if it was the plan that is one slick move.

It wasn't planned IIRC, it just turned out well for them. One little detail that most people miss is that Coke Classic is not the same as the original Coke, the recipe was changed and they saved a fortune doing that on top of their rebounding sales.

Reminds me of the show Madmen.

They changed from real sugar to corn syrup...
Corn syrup is much easier to handle and costs less...
Tastes different too...
Used a lot of corn syrup back in my candy making days...
Parkers Candy mill just burned a week ago and they had a big 1000 gallon tank for it...

They stepped in it , and got lucky with the fix.

High fructose corn syrup (hfcs) is the number two ingredient in just about everything. I have had the pleasure of drinking both coke and pepsi without hfcs. it is like drinking a different product. hfcs leaves a syrupy after taste, where sugar leaves a (sticatto) taste. (those who can read music understand) I find sugar tastes MUCH better than hfcs.

I think Coke was using HFCS long before the "New Coke" debacle. The US puts a giant tariff on imported cane sugar. That's we we use it here and most other countries use sugar. It's also why Hawai'i is a state.