April 23, 1985, 40 years ago: Coca-Cola throws the people a curveball. It turns out to be a wild pitch.
In the 1950s, Coca-Cola, or "Coke" for short, outsold Pepsi-Cola by a 5-1 ratio. Pepsi decided to embrace the rising post-World War II youth culture. In the late 1950s, Pepsi was "for those who think young." In the early 1960s, they advertised "the Pepsi Generation." The message was: "You like Coke? You're old, you're out of it. Get with it, be young, drink Pepsi." It worked, to a degree: Pepsi was still 2nd among colas behind Coke, but it was a considerably closer 2nd.
In the early 1980s, Pepsi began "The Pepsi Challenge," giving people blind taste tests, showing that they preferred Pepsi, and then showing these wins in their commercials. Many, many commercials. You couldn't get through a night of prime-time TV without seeing a Pepsi Challenge commercial.
"A Coke and a smile" wasn't cutting it anymore. Nor was the reworked slogan "Coke is it!" The famously top secret "formula" for Coca-Cola was still working, still Number 1, but Pepsi was getting closer and closer.
So Coke executives decided to get aggressive. They came up with a new formula that they thought people would like better than Coke or Pepsi. They put this new formula into 200,000 taste tests, and, sure enough, it beat Coke and Pepsi more often than not.
So, on April 23, 1985, "New Coke" was introduced. Except... Coca-Cola took the old Coke off the market completely. One of the most famous food brands on the planet, and they dropped it completely. You could no longer get Coke anywhere, only New Coke.
And it was a disaster. The reason old Coke was still Number 1 in the first place is that, for all the people switching to Pepsi in taste tests, people tend to be loyal to their old brands. It's why, while Coke's lemon-lime brand Sprite has remained popular, Pepsi's version has never really caught on, whether rebranded as Teem (introduced in 1959), Slice (1984) or Sierra Mist (1999). And 7-Up also remained a popular lemon-lime drink -- more popular than its "parent" drink, Dr. Pepper.
(UPDATE: In 2023, Pepsi updated its lemon-lime drink again, as Starry.)
In contrast, the main reason Coke was able to replace its diet drink Tab (introduced in 1963) with Diet Coke (1982) with great success is that Tab was never all that popular, anyway.
So the people who wanted to stick with old Coke felt like they were being slapped in the face. To them, it didn't matter how good New Coke was: They wanted their Coke.
And how good was New Coke? As it turned out, not that good. I was 15 years old, and I already preferred Pepsi, and I didn't think New Coke was even as good as the old one. Apparently, most people agreed with me -- on New Coke vs. old Coke, if not on either coke vs. Pepsi.
The scientists at Coca-Cola didn't realize that what works in a taste test might not work for an entire bottle or can of the stuff. They thought that Pepsi was "winning" because it was sweeter than Coke. So New Coke was made to be sweeter than either old Coke or Pepsi. And, for a sip or two, it worked. But for an entire drink, it was too sweet. Too much. Canada Dry had spent years advertising its ginger ale with the slogan, "It's not too sweet." New Coke was way too sweet. (Canada Dry is also now owned by the company that owns Dr. Pepper and 7 Up -- and also Snapple, and Keurig.)
And the funny thing is, the fiasco didn't help Pepsi all that much. People loyal to old Coke still weren't switching to Pepsi. Or to RC Cola (Royal Crown), or to C&C Cola (produced in Ireland, and named for its founders, Thomas Cantrell and Henry Cochrane), or to any other cola. Any gains that Pepsi made were attributed to the marketing campaign it was already doing.
And when Summer arrived, and sales of New Coke didn't go up with the temperatures, the writing was on the wall. And it was profane. On July 11, 1985, Coca-Cola brought the original back, under the name "Coca-Cola Classic" -- or "Classic Coke."
It has been alleged that the whole thing was a conspiracy to get people to miss the old Coke, so that, when it was brought back, people would buy more of it than ever before. If so, it didn't work: It sold only about as well as it had before the whole thing started.
Essentially, Coca-Cola was a victim of its own success: It had hit a ceiling. Anybody who wasn't already drinking it wasn't going to start. And Pepsi was never going to catch them. They, too, had hit a ceiling. The market had spoken, and had solidified.
After Classic Coke was brought back, New Coke hardly sold at all. It was rebranded as Coke II in 1990, and discontinued in 2002, having been bought by few, missed by fewer, and mourned by nearly no one.
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