This is a nice and detailed retelling of the official narrative. It’s a tale that they surely have supported with countless data points, and covers the facts and lessons that support that narrative. I’m just not buying it.
What is apparently missed in this retelling is a fundamental flaw in the report. The Classic Coke recipe definitely was NOT the original one. The last statement of the article, one that was highlighted, is a falsehood.
What is more likely to have been true is much simpler, because it takes into account the primary motivation of a giant multi-national corporation following the “Profits for Shareholders Only” ethos that began in the early 1970s and is dominant today.
They needed to increase profit margins. Switching from sugar to corn syrup was the most efficient way to cut costs, and increase margins without increasing market share.
They clearly had data that the formula change would create some issues. It certainly looked like they underestimated how negative the response would actually be, and how visceral the reaction would be.
What’s missing from this retelling of the narrative is that the corn syrup version that became Classic Coke had to be one of the versions they tested originally. It’s completely illogical to think they only tried one reformulation when coming up with New Coke.
They also surely understood that as the dominant product in the market they couldn’t just make a hard cutover to corn syrup formulation from real sugar without backlash so they had to have planned this, or had Classic ready to go in case it did go this wrong.
When they relaunched Coke Classic it was with the corn syrup and though it’s not AS good as the original sugar version, it was closer than New Coke, and far better.
The narrative that they “went back” to the “original” is a sales technique called a “three bears” close.
Show the prospect a product that is clearly awful/too cheap (the loss leader) and then one that is amazing/too expensive. The “third bear” is the one in the middle they will accept.
That’s how you can sell a lot of mediocre product and occasionally get a sale on a high-end product.
As one who lived through the New Coke fiasco, I remember how truly awful New Coke was, and how after three months they almost instantly dropped a billion gallons of Classic on the market. If that wasn’t part of the plan, how could they possibly have been ready that quickly to switch? New logos, ads, cans, bottles, shipping, and all the other aspects of the supply chain are not that quick to flip over to a different product.
I was close to 10 years old and didn’t believe for a minute that the whole thing was anything other than a carefully executed marketing ruse.
Here’s the play:
Switch to something bad enough to cause people to dislike it enough that the “oops, our bad” narrative is believed. Help amplify the negativity, keeping Coca-Cola in the news (free marketing) and quietly ramp up production on Classic with corn syrup so it’s ready to drop on the market.
After creating pent-up demand for the old version, and enough time to forget what the original sugar version tasted like, then drop the Classic version on the market overnight. This is basically akin to a stock “pump-and-dump.”
Tons of media, tons of demand, and tons of the corn-syrup-based formula to guzzle made most folks forget that Classic was noticeably different, but close enough.
They masterfully manipulated the media and the public to make a fundamental change to their core product literally right under everyone’s noses.
The most genius piece of it is that they created such a great narrative by publicly apologizing for their “mistake” that the narrative has survived nearly forty years.
I can count the number of Coke Classics I’ve had since then on two hands. I didn’t buy it then. Still not buying it.
