[NU Sports] re: leaders/legends

[Jim Leonard]

I've heard that the New Coke "experiment" was actually a planned failure. 

I don't care/ can't prove it but here's what I heard: The Coca Cola company 
wanted to switch from using real sugar to high fructose corn syrup to save money 
but the taste was different. To avoid losing too many customers to Pepsi they 
needed to purge the current supply of the good stuff. They ran New Coke for 
about 6 months and when the last few bottles of Coke with real sugar were 
consumed (by SjTs crying younger brother - trust me) they "suddenly realized" 
the mistake and came back to Coca Cola Classic with HFCS. America has been more 
obese ever since. 

Agreed, better that SEC.

Jim




----- Original Message ----
From: Mike Nolan <nolan at romaine.tssi.com>
To: SjT (Stephen J. Truog) <sjtruog at yahoo.com>
Cc: "nwu-sports at tssi.com" <nwu-sports at tssi.com>
Sent: Fri, January 14, 2011 4:39:04 PM
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] re: leaders/legends

> Even Coca-Cola cut their losses and gave up on New Coke, but Delaney and Co. 
>seem to be bullheaded enough to try and force their idiotic decision to work.

You know, it's been nearly 26 years since 'New Coke', and people are still 
talking about it.  The
only other ad campaign I can think of that achieved that much 'buzz' was the 
Apple 1984 commercial.
(Which, incidentally, Apple paid to run just once, though I've probably seen the 
entire ad 50 times
and portions of it many more times than that.)  

Most Coke Super Bowl commercials are forgotten quickly, with the exception of 
Mean Joe Green.
("I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" was not a Super Bowl ad, it started 
running in July of 1971.)

In other words, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all!  I know the marketing 
profs like
to talk it up as a big failure, but some strategic planning professors have a 
different
view of it.  (One theory is that it allowed Coke to renegotiate a number of key 
franchise
arrangements, since 'Classic Coke' was a different product legally.)

I've also been told that Diet Coke has the 'New Coke' flavor, which may explain 
why I prefer
the taste of Coke Zero.  Oddly enough, these days I prefer the taste of Coke 
Zero over
the taste of Coke Classic aka 'real' Coke.  

None of that plays on the inanity of Legends and Leaders, but maybe talking 
about the Big
Ten, even somewhat derisively, is better than everybody talking only about the 
SEC.
--
Mike Nolan

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