Cheap Tacky ShowBlog – Historic Mistake or Sneaky Genius

They teach this story in marketing classes all over the country and probably at WMU. Today is the 29th anniversary of New Coke. Coke had announced it was changing the formula to Coca Cola. Pepsi was making inroads into Coke lead in the soft drink wars. So new Coke would answer that with a sweeter cola, similar to Pepsi. But people got really upset, so Coke countered with Classic Coke (the original formula). Eventually new Coke went away.

But....here's a somewhat popular conspiracy theory: Could it all have been planned. It got people to care about "old" Coke, and obviously, it took away attention from Pepsi, and put attention back on Coke.

So go ahead and have a Coke and a smile (wink wink)