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New Coke, 35 years on

independent.co.uk

31–40 of 101 posts

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#31

"According to Mullins, the issue was not just the new taste, but that the company had done something “un-American” - taken away his “freedom of choice”." Ah the good old "I want freedom of choice, but if you exercise yours then that's un-American". And we think that entitlement is a 21st century invention.

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

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, in the US anyways corn syrup is used in place of sugar cane which is used in say Mexico

I don't believe this is (100%) true anymore. Mexican Coke you buy in the US is sweetened with cane sugar, but Mexican Coke you buy in Mexico is often sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.

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 corn syrup. People didn't switch to corn syrup because it's better or even cheaper in and of itself, they switched because the US government goes to ridiculous lengths to make it cheap.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#33
post #24

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.

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 been like that pretty much from the start). Pepsi's brand is the reverse, it's new and exciting and the future (for many years their slogan was "The choice of a new generation"). You'd think this was because Coke was the older product and Pepsi was the newer product, but they were both launched around the same time, and both are ancient compared to the age of their average consumers. When Coke became New Coke, it wasn't just making its flavor look like Pepsi's, it was committing the much bigger sin of making its brand look like Pepsi's. Given how tremendously much stronger Coke's brand was than Pepsi's, the idea of rebranding itself as "New" was the much deeper failing on Coke management's part than the flavor change, and arguably was the thing consumers actually reacted most negatively to, 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.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this is (100%) true anymore. Mexican Coke you buy in the US is sweetened with cane sugar, but Mexican Coke you buy in Mexico is often sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.

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.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#36

Then they ruined it (in the US at least) by replacing the sugar with corn syrup.

That happened before the "New Coke" debacle.

And it happened gradually. "Ingredients: ... Sugar and/or High Fructose Corn Syrup ..." appeared on the label for the longest time.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#37
post #34

Who else remembers the original Crystal Pepsi, before they changed the formula? I will admit I drank that stuff like water.

I bought a few for old times sake during the last limited release in 2016 (edit:err, 2018 I guess, [1]). They didn't keep for very long and tasted a bit off to me or maybe my palette has evolved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Pepsi

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#38
My theory is Cherry Coke is actually cherry flavored New Coke. Also, I tried the Stranger Things rerelease of New Coke and it is good, I feel like they should bring it back.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#39
post #24

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.

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.

Re: New Coke, 35 years on

#40

"According to Mullins, the issue was not just the new taste, but that the company had done something “un-American” - taken away his “freedom of choice”." Ah the good old "I want freedom of choice, but if you exercise yours then that's un-American". And we think that entitlement is a 21st century invention.

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?
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