WI: New Coke In A Social Media Age

This idea occurred to me because of my business studies. New Coke had a great deal of backlash in an age of analogue, and people managed to make a serious marketing disaster for Coke with only personal opinion, news coverage, and maybe a pen and paper. What would have happened if that all went down in a social media age, where everyone could complain on their facebook, hashtag twitter, complain on their blog, and post mean comments? Just a thought.
 

Nick P

Donor
The reverse may also be true, Coke might well run a good social media campaign to get a good launch for New Coke.
 
Maybe if New Coke weren't released til the 2000s, the marketing team would have just kept regular coca cola a thing while having New Coke alongside it. Rather than replacing Coca Cola with New Coke and then three months later coming back with Coca Cola Classic.
 
Am I the only one who thinks New Coke was a stunt always intended to flop hard and make people realise how much they loved Coke?
 
Am I the only one who thinks New Coke was a stunt always intended to flop hard and make people realise how much they loved Coke?

I have a hard time believing this wasn't what they did.

They knew how bad of a reaction it would have, and had to have done it on purpose.
 
Never assign forethought and malice to that which can be easily explained with incompetence.

Nah plenty of soft drinks change ingredients all the time, but they just don't advertise it and people literally never notice.

The fact they made a huge thing of it, and then were all "that's it, you'll never taste Coke ever again. It's just New Coke from now on", sparking the inevitable "BUT THIS IS THE TASTE OF AMERICA - THIS BELONGS TO ALL OF US - COKE IS OUR CHILDHOOD" stuff.
And then "...oh ok, we had no idea how important Coke was to 20th century America since you've been sneaking off with Pepsi lately...but since you all now remember how much you love it, WE'LL BRING COKE BACK!!!"

Inevitable sales spike and the amount of advertising and publicity you literally couldn't buy with $10Bn.

New Coke was an inside job.
 
fff

I would have introduced it and classic side by side. Surprised it hasn't been put into the wonderful free style machines with orange my addiction
 
This

Never assign forethought and malice to that which can be easily explained with incompetence.

The marketing genius who pushed the New Coke mantra is probably the same one who told Spielberg, "No, you can't use M&Ms in a science fiction movie about a long-necked alien. We don't want our brand impacted. Ask Reeces instead, nobody buys them anyway." :p
 
I tend to go for the cock-up by Coca Cola.Just look what happened to Dasani (Coke's bottled water brand) in the UK!
New Coke wasn't bad it just wasn't Coke.

PS Dr Pepper is AWFUL
 
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