The Trio cable channel is doing a series this month on famous flops. Last night we watched the episode about New Coke. Unfortunately, the show was pretty much of a flop itself.
It didn't address any of the questions I had, like why did they decide to get rid of the old formula, instead of selling them both. Or why didn't they market test New Coke before switching around the whole country. I'm assuming the concept of market testing simply wasn't around yet, but the show didn't say.
They didn't even say how long the classic "Old Coke" formula had been unchanged before New Coke. They strongly implied that it had been the same since the product was introduced a hundred years before. But that can't be true because of that whole cocaine thing. (I wondered if that was an urban legend but Snopes.com confirms it, and I trust them pretty well.) I guess they didn't want to say "The product had been the same since we discontinued cocaine as an ingredient in 1929."
Mostly the show was about the activities of fanatical Coke drinkers, trying to bring back the old formula. And not trying to get a life, which was what they really needed to do. I really wanted to learn about the corporate side of things: where did this incredibly bad decision come from, who made it, why, who got fired because of it, etc. But there was very little of that. They didn't even say how long New Coke was available! They did say how long it took them to reintroduce "Coke Classic" (77 days) but that was in a bumper graphic, not in the show itself.
Worst of all, there was nothing -- not even one still image -- from the New Coke ad campaign featuring Max Headroom. Dorky, yes, but I fondly remember those ads & had wanted to see them again. That show was a total waste of time. I was also looking forward to the episode about David Lynch's Dune, but now I'm not so sure.
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I read that the impetus for the New Coke was that Pepsi was becoming a more major threat and did better in blind taste tests; the New Coke was designed to be more like Pepsi. So there was market research, in a sense, but they assumed that if people preferred Pepsi, they would prefer a Coke that was made to be more like Pepsi, which unfortunately for them was not true.
That's interesting because I swear I heard somewhere that they did actually successfully market test the new coke before unleashing it. Maybe I imagined that, but it sounds like the show was pretty lame.
that was me posting above.
Many interesting questions were raised but few were answered. They appear to have been completely unprepared for the negative reaction. But at no point do they seem to have pondered what the 39% of people who did not prefer "new Coke" were going to do. I think it illustrates that you only get the answers to the questions you ask. If you ask people to express a preference for getting hit over the head with a bat or a tire-iron, they probably will but that doesn't mean they'll be all that enthusiastic about either option. I'm not sure if they didn't have to research tools available, or they just didn't think to use them, but it appears they took it as an article of faith that because some people expressed a preference for new Coke, that all people would eventually prefer it.
It's entirely possible that they did do real taste tests, and in a *blind comparision* New Coke was preferred over old. However, in a blind taste test, I liked Pepsi better, but I always buy Coke.
(Yes, there's a reason... the blind taste test is without any other variables, like food. Though Pepsi is "sweeter" and therefore better-in-my-mouth alone, once you add food to the mix, I like the "bite" of Coke.)
If you factor in the people-being-stubborn thing ("Why'd they chnage it? It was just fine? We don't need no new-fangeled Coke"), it isn't a huge surprise that it failed.
Also, FWIW, Coke formulations are not consistent worldwide...it's sweeter in some places and less sweet in others. In addition, some Coke is made with corn syrup, which is a different taste than regular syrup.
According to the show, the Coke people did lots of taste tests, and found that 2/3 of people preferred the new version. But they didn't try actually selling the new version of Coke anywhere before they rolled it out everywhere. (I was calling that a "market test" but I don't know if that's the correct term.)
Snopes.com has a page about New Coke. I guess it falls under "urban legends" because of the rumor that New Coke was deliberately bad to get people excited about original Coke again. Anyway, Snopes' page is actually much more informative than the show on Trio last night. No surprise.
According to Snopes, they eliminated old Coke instead of selling both because they didn't want to further segment the market. Even if Coke and New Coke together sold more than Pepsi, Pepsi would still be able to say it was the #1 soda. Which Coke didn't want.
Here's the Snopes page: http://snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp
Every time that exec said "co-cola" I had to grit my teeth. It was making me insane.