The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

Perhaps the biggest marketing blunder in the 20th Century arrived on store shelves: the good people at Coca-Cola decided to change their decades old formula and give people a new, sweeter tasting soft drink (like the old school 280 ml can?).

In three months, they went back to the original.

After reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", Alex offered up a summary of the marketing mishaps that occurred surrounding New Coke:

It was all in a response to the Pepsi Challenge, which was based on a blind taste test with a small amount of cola. Pepsi tended to win because it had that instant sweeter taste, and people responded to that. The Coca-Cola Company, deciding that this proved that the public wanted a sweeter beverage, decided to whip up New Coke to match Pepsi more closely. However, their logic was flawed and didn't take into account the genius of the Pepsi challenge. Turns out, people who responded positively to a gulp of Pepsi couldn't say the same after having a whole can. The prolonged sweetness actually turned some people off of it, which is why those people were Coke drinkers in the first place - it was a little more subtle in flavouring. Pepsi was really crafty in building a marketing ploy around their central weakness: that people responded positively to a little and negatively to a lot. Coke should have done their own homework instead of jumping to conclusions with the Pepsi challenge. Since both companies had been building brand loyalty for so many years, the effect of changing Coke's flavour was disastrous. They failed to persuade the people who like sweet drinks because they were already loyal to Pepsi, and they alienated their own market share by changing the very thing that made them Coke drinkers in the first place. Once they realized the mistake, they brought back their original formulation as Coke Classic, but not after destroying a lot of goodwill and spending a massive amount of money, all because Pepsi did what all good marketers hope to achieve: turning a weakness into a strength.

The funny thing is, I always thought the new Coke actually tasted pretty good, but I'm in the minority. I remember a few trips to the States where a "Coke II" drink was available to purchase several years later and it was indeed the new flavoured Coke. I don't even think that's available anymore. But that's ok...as long as Lift becomes readily available on this side of the planet!