Coca-Cola Changed the Taste: Marketing Debacle or Smart Advertising?

At the end of World War II, Coca-Cola turned 59 years old and held an incredible 60% share of the soft drink market. Competition from other soft drinks slowly cut away at the company’s dominant position until Coke sales held 24% of the market in 1985. That was the year the Coca-Cola Company initiated a product change that business experts argued whether it was a total blunder or a brilliant marketing move.  

Pepsi-Cola joined the soft drink market in 1888, two years after Coca-Cola, and remains Coca-Cola’s main competitor. The two soft drink giants jockeyed back and forth in gaining dominance in sales. That competition became known as the Cola Wars.  

In April 1985, Coke introduced a drink with a different taste called New Coke. It was more like the flavor of Diet Coke, except that it contained sugars. The sugars used in New Coke came from corn and were less expensive than the sweeteners from beets and sugar cane that were in the original formula.

Coke conducted taste tests in several U.S. states for more than three years before New Coke sales started. The new product dominated all the tests with the public preferring New Coke over Pepsi-Cola and original Coca-Cola’s flavor. New Coke, like Diet Coke and Pepsi, was less carbonated and sweeter tasting than original Coca-Cola.

New Coke was a failure in spite of the dominant preference it held in taste tests. Marketing experts debated the reason for the failure for many years.  

Coca-Cola executives started an advertising blitz to introduce the new taste of Coca-Cola on April 23, 1985. The plan was to eliminate the original formula. That’s when a public backlash started. Coke executives promoted their new product as Coca-Cola’s replacement. Soda pop drinkers who liked New Coke in taste tests initially assumed that the new product would become an additional product alongside original Coke. Dropping original Coke impacted sales in a negative way.

National TV news reports showed people filling shopping carts with Cola-Cola to stockpile the product after the company announced they would eliminate the original drink. The Coke Company received hundreds of thousands of letters protesting the company’s move to stop sales of the original product. The public’s response showed the company that consumers of Coca-Cola wanted the original drink in spite of the overwhelming taste test results favoring New Coke.

Famous television and movie celebrity Bill Cosby was Coke’sspokesman for the new drink. He was in commercials across television stations in 1985 with his telling the public that Coke “just got better,” and New Coke “just slides down your throat.” 

Cosby resigned his role as spokesman later that year when Coke announced that the original drink would come back after only three months. It was renamed Coca-Cola Classic and sold side-by-side with New Coke. The actor said his statements about New Coke being better than the original ruined his credibility.

In 1986, the Coke Company introduced a new spokesman named MaxHeadroom. Supposedly a computer generated character; Headroom was a male actor in heavy makeup. The television commercials had static to emphasize the electronic quality of the character. Headroom spoke with a stutter and stammered as if he was the result of computer glitzes. 

The use of Headroom helped keep New Coke on the market, although fragmenting the market with two cola products wasn’t what the company wanted. “The Best Just Got Better” slogan was scrapped because it conflicted with the sales of two different colas.  Renamed Coke II in 1992, New Coke struggled with sales until it was eliminated completely in 2002.

The word Classic was eliminated from North American packaging by 2009. Classic still remains on the label in many international markets. After all the turmoil in 1985, the Coca-Cola Company immediately bounced back in sales and dominated in the Cola Wars.

Roberto Goizueta, then chairman of Coke, received the dubious credit of initiating the change to New Coke. With years of taste tests showing that the public liked the taste of New Coke better than the original, he pushed the company into changing the formula 30 years ago. He was a chemist by trade and didn’t have the marketing background needed to anticipate the consumer’s objection to the change.

The chairman and other Coca-Cola executives shared the label of getting the biggest dose of dumb luck found in soft drink sales. As soon as Coca-Cola Classic hit the market three months after New Coke appeared, the company’s sales zoomed up and still dominate in product share greater than any other soft drink company.

Consumers showed appreciation in getting their Coke back by setting record sales. The top executives must have shook their heads in amazement at the sale increases and probably said in unison, “What just happened?” Nobody in the company lost his or her job because of the New Coke fiasco.

Goizueta spoke at an employee event honoring the 10-year anniversary of New Coke in 1995. His words show a skilled use of double-speak and rationalization:

“We set out to change the dynamics of sugar colas in the United States, and we did exactly that, albeit not in the way we had planned. But the most significant result of New Coke by far,” the chairman said, “was that it sent an incredibly powerful signal—a signal that we really were ready to do whatever was necessary to build value for the owners of our business.”

To say that the top executives of Coke were lucky to get through the controversy and still have their jobs is a huge understatement.

Little was mentioned to the consumers of Coca-Cola about another change made to the famous product five years before New Coke hit the market. In 1980, succumbing to pressures from their independent bottlers, Coke permitted a substitution of high fructose corn sweeteners instead of beet and cane sugars originally used. The bottlers, independent franchise owners, wanted to reduce their costs by using the less expensive sugars that came from corn. Offering an ever-expanding line of products increased costs to the bottlers, and the lower-cost sugars helped the bottom lines. For most cola drinkers, the difference in taste was insignificant. Some consumers who considered themselves connoisseurs of Coke said the crisp and bracing taste of Coca-Cola was blunted.

Coca-Cola made with cane sugar is still made in Mexico, Canada, Hawaii and parts of Europe. It’s available online and in specialty stores.

Some conspiracy thinkers said the entire effort to switch to New Coke was a deliberate marketing ploy calculated to increase profits by changing to the use of the less expensive sugars. The company’s rebound was remarkable, and it gave the impression the whole thing was planned. Keep in mind, however, the change in sugars started five years before New Coke hit the market.

Donald Kough shared the leadership of the Coca-Cola Company with Goizeuta as president and chief operating officer. Responding to the unexpected increase of sales after Coca-Cola Classic was brought to the market, Kough make the following statement:

 “Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart.”

Marketing and advertising experts frequently mention the introduction of New Coke as a cautionary tale. It illustrates how businesses can tamper too extensively with a well-established brand and create a backlash from the consumers.

Thanks for reading this blog. Please take time to see my website www.joevlatino.com. You can read about my book of short stories “The Device.” The book is available through the website as well as Amazon. Look for another blog later this month.

Stonehenge: Ancient Structure, How and Why Unknown

A massive stone monument sits on a chalky plain north of Salisbury, England. Named Stonehenge, its present appearance dates back 5,000 years. It’s older than the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

Archeologists and historians have been investigating the site for hundreds of years and still can’t find answers to why and how the monument was made. No one can prove the purpose of the monument, and archeologists can’t agree on how the Neolithic residents moved the massive stones to the site and then placed them to form a design. The people were at the end of the Stone Age when the wheel didn’t exist. How they transported and lifted the stones is a mystery.

Carbon dating findings show that what we see now as Stonehenge was begun in 2620 BC and construction stopped in 2300 BC. It’s unclear whether the monument was completed or whether some of the outer stones were taken away to be used for other purposes.

The original beginnings before the stones were laid goes back many more years. Primitive people as far back as 10,000 years ago dug ditches with high embankments called henges using animal antlers and sticks. Henges usually had dirt piled on the outside of the ditches, but the embankments at Stonehenge are on the inside of the circles.        

Two concentric rings make up the structure. The inner circle is made of five doorway-like towers. Two large boulders stand side-by-side and are topped with another stone or lintel to make each tower. These are sarsen stones, which are a type of sandstone. They measure about 30 feet tall and weigh up to an incredible 50,000 pounds each.

An incomplete outer circle has a similar structure. Smaller blue stones, a type of granite, are positioned on the ground of the outer circle. The blue stones, named because of their hue when wet, range in weight from two to five tons each. The monument consists of 153 stones placed 340 feet across the plain.  

The nearest quarry holding blue stones is 40 miles from Stonehenge. Sarsens, the big ones, had to be moved as far as 140 miles away. One of the many theories, and some outrageous guesses, about how Stonehenge was built is that glaciers moved the stones from the faraway quarries to the location. This has been proved impossible.

Among the outrageous theories that existed for many years is that a civilization of giant humans lived in the area and provided the muscle power needed to lift the tonnages of stones. Another theory, and this one actually lasted many years, was that Merlin the magician provided his powers to move and plant the stones. More contemporary thinking from the last century delivered the idea that aliens or outer space visitors provided the technology to move the massive stones.

Even without having a wheel, the Neolithic Europeans of that time had the technology of moving things on sleds or skids. Animal fat was a known lubricant to use under the skids, and they knew about placing tree trunks as primitive wheels underneath loads.

Once the stones were dragged to the site, tree branches could be used to pull the boulders onto their positions, according to some theories. Dirt was piled up and around the tall sarsens to form a ramp, and the lintel caps were pushed into place. All the theories are speculation, because the primitive people living there had no written language to provide any evidence except showing what they did.

The primitive beginning of the earthen ditches, called henges, date as far back as 10,000 years ago in this part of England. Archeologists discovered remains of three large posts that were sunk into the ground. The experts speculated that the wooden posts were totems or some sort of religious symbols. They found a series of 56 deep, ancient holes in the general area of the stone monument, adding to the belief that people worked on the site long before the stones were put into place.

Many historical experts believe that Stonehenge and many surrounding areas are old burial sites. The evidence of bodies buried near and around the monument gives support to that theory. Numerous burial mounds have been found in the area. The scientific discoveries about Stonehenge began in the 1600’s AD through the efforts of King James I of England. The king provided money and people needed to investigate the curious site. Investigators sponsored by the king dug into suspicious depressions near the site and found burned remains of women and children. They concluded that human sacrifice was practiced by the primitive people.

Any human sacrifice was done by a religious group called Druids who came long after Stonehenge was built. The Druids lived with the Celtic residents of England from 300 BC to 1,000 AD. The Druids were religious leaders who believed all things in nature held a deity or god. Druids did practice human sacrifice. 

Another popular thought about the purpose of the stones is that the circled area is a calendar of some kind. The rising sun during the summer solstice and winter solstice does align directly over a heel stone positioned 80 yards outside the outer ring. That’s a unique quality of Stonehenge, but there doesn’t seem to be any other geological meaning to the structure. A popular theory that the site can be used to predict solar eclipses is incorrect.

Many people celebrate the mystery of Stonehenge in an annual celebration during the beginning of summer and winter. During the summer solstice celebration of 1985, more than 100,000 enthusiastic, would-be Druids, filled the area and vandalized the grounds. The visitors dug holes into the earth and left an enormous amount of litter over the area. The British government closed access to Stonehenge until 2000. Now about 30,000 visitors attend during the biannual celebrations under strict guidelines.

Casual visitors and even researchers can access the site only with governmental permits. Investigations to know more about the origins and purposes of Stonehenge continue. We can’t know definitely why and how the enigma exists. We can only have better-informed guesses.

Thank you for reading this blog. Another one will be in this space later this month. Visit my web site at joevlatino.com for information about by book of short stories “The Device.” It’s available on eBook and paperback through Amazon.

Founder of Mother’s Day Tried to Stop It

The second Sunday of this month is the 101^st birthday of Mother’s Day. It’s the annual celebration of the day set aside to honor mothers for their devotions and sacrifices to their families.

Anna Jarvis is responsible for getting President Woodrow Wilson to push a proclamation through the U.S. Congress to officially recognize Mother’s Day as a national celebration in 1914. She started the celebration to honor her own mother, Ann Jarvis, who was a pioneer in helping working class men and women. Ann Jarvis founded Mother’s Day Work Clubs in the late 1800’s. She exposed the horrid working conditions factory workers had to endure. She did this before the benefits of work unions helped to improve working conditions.

By 1920, however, Jarvis (Anna, the daughter) started a national movement to eliminate the annual celebration. Jarvis insisted that the meaning of Mother’s Day to honor mothers had been lost in the commercialism of buying cards, gifts and flowers. She insisted that children needed to hand write letters of appreciation to their mothers and express their gratitude and love in the personal notes. The appropriate flower to present to mothers, according to Jarvis, was a single carnation.

Jarvis, the daughter, incorporated the Mother’s Day International Association and held the trademark for the phrase Mother’s Day. The world-wide payouts for the trademark made her rich and she used her wealth to fund campaigns to eliminate the celebration of mothers. Her fight against the national day drained her fortune, and she died in poverty in 1948. The founder of Mother’s Day never married and died without having children.

The annual celebration for mothers will account for approximately three billion dollars in the United States. Families will average $173.00 for the typical cost of cards, candy, flowers and taking mothers out to eat. Florists, restaurants, retail stores and movie theaters are among the businesses that benefit from the money spent on Mother’s Day.

Since the annual event falls on a Sunday, the expenses of days off for both government and private sector businesses don’t apply. It’s a win-win day for everyone, especially mothers who get the presents.

Thanks for reading this blog. Look for a new blog later this month. See my website www.joevlatino.com for information about my book of short stories, “The Device.”