reminds me of the brilliant marketing tactic used in the 80's when Coke came out with "New Coke".
reminds me of the brilliant marketing tactic used in the 80's when Coke came out with "New Coke".
What are you talking about? That was pure genius.
Despite the Pepsi Challenge demonstrating that most people can't tell the difference, it was assumed at the time, according to trends, that the population preferred a sweeter cola - this begat Coca Cola's change to "New Coke"
According to Malcomb Gladwell's book "Blink", there were factors other than taste that influenced choices, and when labels were added, preferences changed from one brand to the other. So basically, branding was everything.
When Coca Cola released "New Coke", it didn't matter if the drink tasted like an heavenly elixir or of vomit the point being is that it drummed up huge amounts of interest and free advertising. As they used to say in politics, "I don't care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right."
So many new customers bought New Coke to try it out, and there were New Coke Parties as the roll-out wasn't in all markets at once, and importing the drink made the host look hip and cool.
In the meantime, many people who were resistant to change bought up the old stock at whatever price it could be obtained and a black market and scalping took place as people were hoarding the original formula. This was great for Coca Cola as people were buying at full price the New Coke, and were quickly burning through the inventory of the original formula.
There is a shelf life to any cola soft drink, so those who were hoarding the product hoping to sell it years later like rare baseball cards discovered that unlike good wine, Coca Cola doesn't age well in storage - not that people were actually constructing the equivalent of wine coolers to store the vintage stuff....
Interestingly, just as the expiration date of the original formula cola was reached, it was discovered by marketing that New Coke just wasn't selling its taste equivalent Pepsi, and so they decided to restore the formula but added a bit of marketing genius - prefix the same old soda with the word "Classic".
They never could have done that without coming out with that dreck New Coke, but now they upgraded the name and made a hundred year old product appear both fresh and original by simply changing the packaging.
Like babies who have had their favorite toy, or addicts who have had their favorite drug taken from them, when the opportunity for getting it back appears, they grab as much as they can in the odd expectation that it might be taken away again. Again, the bottlers were working overtime to produce the "classic" version while a new batch of "scalpers" were planning on cashing in on profiting on selling the equivalent of the Inverted Jenny stamp.
During this whole "fiasco", Coca Cola was receiving all kinds of free publicity, news coverage and open debate. This is called a "Win".