Sunday, May 02, 2010

Coca Cola's latest consumer attack

Many years ago, Coca Cola lived through the worst marketing attempt of the 20th century. They decided that they would replace their popular soft drink, Coca Cola, with New Coke. For some insane reason -- scratch that, insanity marked the entire thing. Due to insanity, they decided the way to really hook the public into going for a product they didn't want and abandoning one they enjoyed, the thing to do was to film a commercial with a crowd of celebrities (among them Farrah Fawcett, Ryan O'Neal, Sally Kellerman) who never spoke about New Coke but were seen walking towards some sort of New Coke temple. It must have been a temple because all the celebrities were dressed in white.

New Coke failed spectacularly which is why you will not find one at any store or in any machine. That was the 20th century. We're now in the 21st and the company is apparently hopeful that they can still publicly humiliate themselves. Hence their latest move.

Diet Coke


Do you see what's happening?

On the right is the familiar 20 ounces Diet Coke bottle, the type you might find in a vending machine or buy in a six pack. On the left?

That's the 2 liter bottle. If it looks differently to you, that's because it is. They've redone it to indent on the bottom portion so that it now looks like the 20 ounce drink.

Did you lose liquid with the redesign?

No.

But you did gain cost.

Across the country, Coca Cola's got their soft drinks in the newly designed bottles on sale (popular sales include 4 for $5) and consumers may not have caught on yet. But if you've looked at the regular price or paid non-sales price, you should have noticed that you're paying an average of 36 cents more for a 2 liter Coca Cola soft drink product then you were two months ago before the redesign.

According to America's Best Online, Coke just beats Pepsi (in diet and non-diet forms) so it might be of interest to consumers that Pepsi has not changed their bottling and has not increased the price for their two liter drinks. The same can be said of Dr. Pepper which also shows up in the top ten best selling colas.


In 1985, Coca Cola was sent a message by consumers and dropped New Coke (they try to spin the story as a success for the company here). In 2010, soft drink consumers could once again send a message, that they won't pay more for new bottling, by buying Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.