Think of the history of a successful brand, and you might think of Coca-Cola. Indeed, with nearly a billion Coca-Cola drinks sold every day, it is the most recognized brand in the world. Yet in 1985, the Coca-Cola Company decided to discontinue its most popular soft drink and replace it with a formula it would market as New Coke. To understand why this potentially disastrous decision was made, it is necessary to appreciate what was happening in the soft drinks market. In particular, we need to take a closer look at the growing competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola in the years, even decades, before the launch of New Coke. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The relationship between the main rivals had not been healthy. Although marketing experts have long believed that competition between the two companies has made consumers more cola-conscious, the companies themselves have rarely seen it that way. Indeed, the Coca-Cola Company even fought Pepsi-Cola in a legal battle over the use of the word "cola" in its name and lost. But off the court, Coca-Cola has always been ahead. Shortly after World War II, Time magazine already celebrated Coke’s “near peaceful conquest of the world.” By the late 1950s, Coca-Cola's sales exceeded those of Pepsi by a ratio of more than five to one. However, over the next decade, Pepsi repositioned itself as a youth brand. This strategy was risky because it involved sacrificing its older customers for Coca-Cola's sake, but it ultimately proved effective. By narrowing its scope, Pepsi was able to position its brand in relation to the old and classic image of its competitor. Increasingly considered “the drink of youth,” Pepsi has managed to narrow the gap. In the 1970s, Coca-Cola's main rival raised the stakes even further by launching the Pepsi Challenge: testing blind consumers the difference between its own brand and "the real brand." Much to the horror of longtime Coca-Cola chairman Robert Woodruff, most attendees preferred Pepsi's sweeter formula. In the 1980s, Pepsi continued its offensive by organizing the Pepsi Challenge around the world and announcing the arrival of the “Pepsi generation”. It also recruited celebrities likely to appeal to its target markets, such as Don Johnson and Michael Jackson (this tactic survived into the new millennium, with the likes of Britney Spears and Robbie Williams providing more recent endorsements). By the time Roberto Goizueta became president in 1981, Coca-Cola's number one status was beginning to look vulnerable. It was losing market share not only to Pepsi, but also to certain drinks produced by the Coca-Cola company itself, such as Fanta and Sprite. In particular, the runaway success of Diet Coke was a double-edged sword, as it helped shrink the market for sugar cola. By 1983, the year Diet Coke became number three behind Standard Coke and Pepsi, Coke's market share had fallen to an all-time low of just under 24 percent. . Clearly something had to be done to ensure Coca-Cola's supremacy. Goizueta's first response to the "Pepsi Challenge" phenomenon was to launch an advertising campaign in 1984, praising Coca-Cola for being less sweet than Pepsi. The television commercials were hosted by Bill Cosby, at the time one of the most recognizable faces inplanet, and clearly someone who was too old to be part of the Pepsi generation. The impact of these efforts to differentiate Coca-Cola from its rival has been limited. Coca-Cola's market share remained the same while Pepsi caught up. Another concern was that when shoppers had a choice, such as at their local supermarket, they tended to gravitate towards Pepsi. Only Coca-Cola's more efficient distribution allowed it to maintain its lead. For example, there were still many more vending machines selling Coke than Pepsi. The fact remains that, despite the proliferation of soft drink brands, Pepsi was gaining new customers. Having already lost taste, the last thing Coca-Cola could afford was to lose its number one status. The problem, as Coca-Cola perceived it, lay in the product itself. As the Pepsi Challenge has pointed out millions of times, Coca-Cola can still be defeated when it comes to taste. This seems to be confirmed by the success of Diet Coke which is closer to Pepsi in terms of flavor. So, in what should have been seen as a logical step, Coca-Cola began working on a new formula. A year later, they arrived in New Coke. After producing its new formula, the Atlanta-based company conducted 200,000 taste tests to see how it fared. The results were overwhelming. Not only did it taste better than the original, but people also preferred it to Pepsi-Cola. However, if Coca-Cola wanted to stay ahead of Pepsi-Cola, it couldn't have two directly competing products on the shelves at the same time. time. So she decided to scrap the original Coca-Cola and introduce New Coke in its place. The problem was that the Coca-Cola Company had seriously underestimated the power of its first brand. As soon as the decision was announced, a large part of the American population immediately decided to boycott the new product. On April 23, 1985, New Coke was introduced and a few days later, production of the original Coke was stopped. This joint decision has since been called “the biggest marketing mistake of all time”. Sales of New Coke were low and public outrage was high that the original was no longer available. It soon became clear that Coca-Cola had no choice but to bring back its original brand and formula. “We heard you,” Goizueta said at a news conference on July 11, 1985. He then left it to the company's chief operating officer, Donald Keough, to announce the product's return. Keough admitted: The simple fact is that all the time, money and skill devoted to consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment felt by so many of people to the original Coca-Cola. The passion for the original Coca-Cola – and that's the word for it, passion – surprised us. It's a wonderful American mystery, a beautiful American enigma, and you can't measure it any more than you can measure love or pride or patriotism. In other words, Coca-Cola learned that marketing goes far beyond the product itself. The majority of tests were done blind and therefore taste was the only factor evaluated. The company eventually took Pepsi's bait and, in doing so, conceded its main brand asset: originality. When Coca-Cola was launched in the 1880s, it was the only product on the market. She thus invents a new category and the brand name becomes the name of the product itself. For most of the last century, Coca-Cola capitalized on its "original" status in various campaigns 1985.’