You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [103]
Newspapers editorialized against it; people staged protests, all before a single bottle shipped to the shelves.
On April 23, 1985, the New Coke finally shipped, the same week the old formula was discontinued at bottlers across the country. Critics and consumers alike defied the extensive taste tests marketing had conducted. The new flavor was vilified as “Coke for wimps.” While they expected some drop-off in sales to a small segment that preferred the old taste, no one working for the corporation expected outright rejection. While at first the public seemed to accept the new drink, the groundswell against New Coke grew within weeks. This was fanned by newspaper, magazine and television coverage of the rollout. At its peak, Coca-Cola executives blamed the media for turning this into a bigger issue than it should have been. However, that was a miscalculation of the modern age’s global village shaping opinion.
Less than two months after its introduction, New Coke was the center of controversy. At corporate headquarters, their consumer hot line was receiving 1,500 calls a day while the negative mail totaled about 40,000 pieces. News organizations happily reported on the formation of groups dedicated to the original formula. The best known were the Old Cola Drinkers of America and Society for the Preservation of the Real Thing.
In his bestselling book on the failure, The Real Coke, the Real Story, Thomas Oliver recorded case after case of people rejecting the new blend. One choice example: “There are only two things in my life: God and Coca-Cola. Now you have taken one of those things away from me.” Word spread of people hoarding bottles of the old formula, sending for it from Canada or fetching as much as $30 per two-liter bottle on the black market.
Pepsi-Cola USA president Roger Enrico crowed, calling New Coke “the Edsel of the ’80s.” He noted that Pepsi had successfully built up the notion that their cola drink was for a young, hip Pepsi Generation of consumers. What neither Enrico nor the folks at Coca-Cola counted on was the size of the nostalgia market as the baby boomers, raised on Coke, were beginning to age and think fondly of the past.
Sales plummeted so fast that by July the old formula was announced as making a “triumphant comeback.” “We have heard you,” said Roberto Goizueta, chairman of Coca-Cola at the time. Donald Keough, president and chief operating officer, added, “The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people….
“The passion for original Coca-Cola — and that is the word for it, passion — was something that caught us by surprise…It is a wonderful American mystery, a lovely American enigma, and you cannot measure it any more than you can measure love, pride, or patriotism.” It may have caught the executives by surprise, but to Joe Public it was a no-brainer.
In retrospect, people thought Coca-Cola goofed and never asked about abandoning the original formula. It has been widely cited as one of the classic marketing blunders of the twentieth century. However, Oliver’s book explores the market research and determined where they went wrong. It had more to do with interpreting the data than never asking the key question. Apparently, the misinterpretation of the data occurred in comparing the results of the focus groups with that of a survey conducted using individual interviews with a large representative sample of consumers. There was a conflict in the results between the focus groups and the survey. The survey, it seems, indicated a limited amount of resentment to the