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New Coke, 35 years on

independent.co.uk

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Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#41

Post by teslabox »

I like the conspiracy theory about how the New Coke fiasco was actually deliberate subterfuge for switching the product from sugar to high fructose corn syrup. Corn-syrup coca-cola tastes different than Coca Kola's classic sugar formula, and allegedly people noticed the difference when the Coca-Cola company was doing tests, pre-New Coke.

My cousin-in-law only drinks "Mexican Coke" (but Mexicans drinking coca-cola in their country get HFCS-Coke too. Wikipedia says only mexican coca-kola produced for export is made with sugar).

Fortunately HFCS is no longer contaminated with mercury [0] [1] (or less contaminated?), thanks to the efforts of a whistleblower [2].

The last problem to deal with is how HFCS preparations might have more calories than listed on the label, on account of residual starch molecules that aren't split into glucose. Residual starch adds calories but don't affect the perceived sweetness.

I previously wrote about how the original soda products were herbal beverages: Coca-Cola is made with flavorings from the Coca leaf and the Kola nut, Root beer is made with roots, Dr. Pepper's 21 plant flavors, etc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17979670

[0] Mercury in High-Fructose Corn Syrup? - https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090127/mercury-in-... (2009)

[1] https://www.iatp.org/documents/much-high-fructose-corn-syrup... (2009)

[2] FDA WHISTLEBLOWER SPEAKS OUT ABOUT MERCURY IN OUR FOOD - https://www.foodwhistleblower.org/fda-whistleblower-speaks-o...

[edit: added some words to first paragraph re sugar and Coca-Cola company's taste tests pre-new-coke.]

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#42

Post by dannykwells »

My understanding is that this was, long-term, very good for Coke. Check out this line:

" On 11 July 1985, once the extent of the soda brand’s mistake had become evident, Coca-Cola relaunched the original recipe, rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic.

According to the beverage corporation, the news of the drink’s long-awaited return “made the front page of virtually every major newspaper”. "

Talk about free advertising!!

From a biased source: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/the-story-of-one-of-th...

"The events of 1985 changed forever the dynamics of the soft-drink industry and the success of The Coca-Cola Company, as the Coca-Cola brand soared to new heights and consumers continued to remember the love they have for Coca-Cola. "

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#43

Post by gamegoblin »

karatestomp wrote: post #39
yodon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The path to New Coke was quite simple, actually. Coke learned that in blind taste tests, consumers overwhelmingly preferred Pepsi to Coke, by a wide margin and repeatable across a wide range of tests. The preference was simple - Pepsi was sweeter, and in blind taste tests people overwhelmingly preferred the sweeter drink. This hard data was seen as indicating a looming crisis and management felt the need to act and a…

Those blind tests are so weird. I’m not a huge soda drinker but I can tell Pepsi vs. Coke by smell , let alone taste, and I’m pretty sure I’m no super-taster. I mean yeah close clones of either might fool me (never checked) but I’m very sure I could tell those two apart without difficulty, and likely without even taking a drink.

I thought the exact same thing.

I decided to prove I could tell the difference to my wife, so we set up a blindfolded test, and I did absolutely no better than random.

However, we did another test where I was given a sip of coke beforehand as a baseline, and then got 100% accuracy.

But without the known-flavor baseline, I was essentially unable to accurately label the samples.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#44

Post by at_a_remove »

stuff4ben wrote: post #2

I wish someone would spill the secrets of how New Coke came to be from inside CocaCola's offices. From the boardroom to the marketing dept, to the "chefs" who made the new recipe. Now that would be an interesting read. To see the decisions that were made and office politics that shaped what almost caused CocaCola to go under.

High-fructose corn syrup has some advantages, from a corporate aspect. First off, the USA subsidizes corn production rather heavily. It mixes readily with water, whereas sugar had some issues when it came to the mixers in the vats. Once these sort of advantages come to light, all you then have to do is convince first yourself, then everyone else, that it tastes the same or better.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#45

Post by kiplkipl »

titanomachy wrote: post #40
kiplkipl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the new definition of entitlement - that means exactly the opposite of the old definition - is.

Do you mean that the old definition is the right to have something, and the new version is the mistaken perception of that right?

Exactly. So now using the old definition can be ambiguous and has to be replaced by something 'wordier'. I can't do anything about it but I do think it's a shame.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#46

Post by Zenbit_UX »

chrisseaton wrote: post #20
franze wrote: post #3

Not mentioned in the article was the "market research gone wrong". New Coke was market tested in supermarkets with taste samples and questionnaires. New Coke was preferred in these taste tests. But the context was wrong, a small sip in the supermarket under surveillance is not a bottle at home / cinema / picknik. But: "almost ruined" is wrong, too. After this CocaCola basically got the status as USA national heritage…

I heard something about sweetness? If you're taking little sips you much prefer sweeter, but you wouldn't want an entire drink of that much sweetness. I heard that's why Pepsi Cola (sweeter than Coke) wins in those blind taste tests... but everyone still drinks Coca-Cola instead.

Pepsi leaves a very nasty lingering sweetness at the back of my throat for hours after drinking it. There would be no contest if I was presented a blind tasting between the two and I could likely identify diet and zero varieties of each brand.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#47

Post by wolco »

chrisseaton wrote: post #20
franze wrote: post #3

Not mentioned in the article was the "market research gone wrong". New Coke was market tested in supermarkets with taste samples and questionnaires. New Coke was preferred in these taste tests. But the context was wrong, a small sip in the supermarket under surveillance is not a bottle at home / cinema / picknik. But: "almost ruined" is wrong, too. After this CocaCola basically got the status as USA national heritage…

I heard something about sweetness? If you're taking little sips you much prefer sweeter, but you wouldn't want an entire drink of that much sweetness. I heard that's why Pepsi Cola (sweeter than Coke) wins in those blind taste tests... but everyone still drinks Coca-Cola instead.

There is something McDonald's level addicting with coke that you just don't get from a pepsi.

It's not the taste but the feeling afterwards.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#48

Post by wolco »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35
seisvelas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that it is not 100% true, but it is mostly true. The US uses corn syrup because the US government heavily subsidizes corn. Some Mexican producers in Mexico do use corn syrup, which is a cheap import from the US, but even here the majority use sugar. This kind of thing happens in with other countries as well. In New Zealand you can get local coke which is sugar-sweetened or imported American coke with co…

Maybe not "heavily". It was 2B out of a 50B corn crop. So, 4% classed as 'heavily subsidized'? And a large portion of this is in the form of insurance against bad weather/crop loss. Otherwise, we'd have no farmers left in a couple of year (everybody has a crop loss once in a while). FWIW.

They invested to get the market to 50b at the expensive of other products that could have been grown. The 2b figure just helps keep the edges from fraying.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#49

Post by fl0wenol »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #26
timcederman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought some as part of the Stranger Things promotion, so assuming it actually does match the original recipe, it was pretty good. I did blind taste tests with the rest of the family and everyone picked New Coke as their preferred flavour. I guess the best way to describe it is it seemed a bit sweeter (but not more sugary), in the same way Tab had a sweeter flavor profile compared to Diet Coke.

Strangely, in blind taste tests, a majority of folks chose Diet Pepsi over all the others (all other Pepsi; all other Coke). Which shows, soft drink preferences are largely cultural?

Very interesting, while I do not like the flavor of Pepsi, I do crave Diet Pepsi every once in awhile, even though I normally prefer Coke products. I thought maybe I was the only one.

As far as colas go, Diet Pepsi has a decent flavor profile; it's sweet but not cloying or syrupy. And it has enough of whatever acids or other flavorings to mask / distract from the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners.

That's the one thing that hurts Diet Coke, I think, particularly if it isn't cold.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#50

Post by TeMPOraL »

yodon wrote: post #33
yodon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The path to New Coke was quite simple, actually. Coke learned that in blind taste tests, consumers overwhelmingly preferred Pepsi to Coke, by a wide margin and repeatable across a wide range of tests. The preference was simple - Pepsi was sweeter, and in blind taste tests people overwhelmingly preferred the sweeter drink. This hard data was seen as indicating a looming crisis and management felt the need to act and a…

To add a little more color, the "which is sweeter" question, which drove the shift to New Coke, was as a leadership failure actually secondary to the deeper brand failing that was New Coke. Coke's brand has always been a golden-age concept, a celebration of all the good times you've had in the past drinking coke with family and friends (think of all the old timey photos and artwork you've seen in Coke ads, and it's b…

> because it was destroying their relationship to one of the strongest brands in the world. No one wanted Coke to be New. They had Pepsi for that. They preferred Coke to be their connection to the golden age of all their past good times.

I don't believe anything resembling this kind of thinking process goes through a typical customer's head, even subconsciously. It doesn't pass the smell test as a rationalization, and sounds to me like something people in advertising industry write to each other in reports to justify their high salaries.

I propose a simpler hypothesis: customers have already self-selected themselves into preferring Coke or Pepsi. New Coke didn't introduce any new value - people who would like it were already drinking Pepsi. At the same time, its existence was received as a threat by Coke customers, as a New Coke seems like something that's going to replace the good ol' Coke. People don't like change; in particular, they don't like when a product that works for them is changed, because that change is almost universally for the worse[0].

The difference between the above and what you described is that my hypothesis doesn't require from a customer to have anything other than a "Coke = cola drink that hits the 'sweet spot' for me" relationship. I don't see the reason to believe consumer brand perception to be anything more than that. Especially not consciously thinking about how a brand reminds one of the past, or something.

--

[0] - Short-term. Sometimes it's worth to e.g. mix up user interfaces in software to enable further improvement. But with soft drinks, there's nothing other than short term.

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