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Coca-cola will change the recipe for Coca-cola Zero Sugar

2021-08-08T23:34:56.399Z


Coca-Cola will renew the flavor of its Coca-Cola Zero Sugar in the United States market, will it be another disaster like New Coke?


(CNN Business) -

If you've had a sip of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar recently and thought it tastes a little different, you're not crazy.

The company introduced a new version of the drink to the United States designed to make it taste more like regular Coca-Cola.

Maybe you like the new flavor.

Maybe you prefer the old one, but you don't mind.

Or maybe you hate it so much that you vow never to buy another Coke Zero.

The last option should shake Coca-Cola and remind it of an infamous period in its history: the 1985 New Coke disaster.

Companies like Coca-Cola have to walk a fine line when it comes to their flagship products.

They have to follow consumer trends and stay ahead of the competition.

But when they make changes, they run the risk of upsetting loyal customers and alienating them from the brand.

And it can be difficult to predict what people really want.

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Rival PepsiCo learned this in 2015, when it removed aspartame from its Diet Pepsi formula in response to consumer complaints about the ingredient.

Enough shoppers resisted the new recipe that Pepsi brought back the aspartame version the following year.

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But when it comes to product bugs, nothing comes close to New Coke.

The brand has to be careful not to stumble again today.

The history of the New Coke

In this photo from July 11, 1985, cans of New Coke and Coca-Cola Classic are shown during a press conference in Atlanta.

(AP Photo / Charles Kelly, file)

In April 1985, Coca-Cola held a boisterous press conference in New York to reveal the new recipe for the drink, confirming rumors that the company was changing its flagship product for the first time in nearly 100 years.

"At Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, some two hundred reporters, photographers, and videographers eagerly awaited confirmation of the sensational news, while hundreds more participated via satellite," wrote Thomas Oliver in his 1986 book on the subject, "The Real Coke. , The Real Story ".

The new Coke was supposed to solve a big problem for the company: In the years before its announcement, the iconic drink was losing share to Pepsi. The rival cola had for years boasted that consumers preferred its product through its "Pepsi Challenge" ad campaign, which pitted Coke against Pepsi in blind taste tests. The new Coca-Cola was born from a taste test of Coca-Cola's own. The nearly 200,000 consumers who tried the new formula liked it better than the old one, the company said. It has been described as a softer and sweeter version of the original.

However, the new product was greeted with immediate outrage.

The New York Times reported in a 1985 article that a man wrote a song simply called "You Changed the Taste."

The song's message was clear: "Our feelings are very strong, after 99 years of being right, you did wrong to your country," the lyrics said.

"So now listen to our plea, and know this is not a joke, give us back the taste of Coca-Cola."

Others formed protest groups, the Times noted.

Another compared the change to the death of a friend.

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In May 1985, fear spread among executives that outrage could lead to a boycott of other Coca-Cola products, according to Oliver.

In a blog post detailing the history of New Coke, the company describes the reaction it received: "In June 1985, The Coca-Cola Company received 1,500 calls a day on its customer service line, at compared to the 400 a day I received before the taste change, "according to the post. "People seemed to hold any Coca-Cola employee personally responsible for the change, from the security officers in the central building to their neighbors who worked for Coca-Cola."

According to a July 1985 article in The New York Times, executives began to seriously consider bringing the old version back in June, just a few months after introducing the new product.

The company tracked consumer reaction to the new product in the weeks after its launch.

They found that, at first, most people preferred the new product.

But over time, more said they liked the old version better.

This trend continued throughout the summer.

Coca-Cola listened to its heartbroken fans.

He returned the old formula and ended up eliminating the New Coke entirely.

The rejection of the new recipe and the mobilization around the old version ended up "reaffirming to people that this classic and traditional brand has a meaning for them beyond the search for a particular type of flavor", said Amanda Ciafone, author of "Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Corporation", which analyzes social movements and the culture that surrounds the company.

Coca-Cola points to the incident as an example of how much people care about Coca-Cola.

Now some people have a nostalgic attachment to New Coke.

In 2019, the company brought back a limited number of New Coke cans in a cross-promotional campaign with Netflix for the third season of "Stranger Things," which featured the item.

Bringing back New Coke was a way for Coca-Cola to "not take itself too seriously," Stuart Kronauge, then president of Coca-Cola's sparkling business unit and senior vice president of Coca-Cola, told CNN Business at the time. Coca-Cola marketing for North America.

To recreate the product, Coca-Cola had to rummage through its archives for the design and rummage through its vault to retrieve the recipe.

Duane Stanford, editor and writer of Beverage Digest, has another opinion.

"The lesson they learned from New Coke was that ... consumers really pay attention to this kind of thing," he said.

"And it's a great way to keep getting people thinking about your brand."

But, he cautioned, the company has to make sure it doesn't take things too far.

"The last thing you want to do is drive away your main consumers."

The right kind of enthusiasm

Coca-Cola will adjust the recipe for Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

Coca-Cola has been introducing its new version of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar internationally for months, which is designed to taste more like regular Coca-Cola.

This summer, the new version arrived in the United States.

Around the world, frustrated customers have expressed dismay at the new formulation.

On Twitter, users described the taste as "bleh" and "not good."

One said it "sucks".

Around the time Coca-Cola announced the US launch, Rafael Prandini, category manager for the Coca-Cola brand in North America, told CNN Business that the company was confident in receiving the drink.

"We have previously tested both the new recipe and the new look, with current Coca-Cola Zero Sugar consumers and those who are not," he said at the time.

"And they really love it."

The results the company has seen from these launches are "very encouraging," he said.

The company added Thursday that since the recipe change, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar "continues its strong performance throughout Europe and Latin America."

Some people have responded positively to the new flavor, and they have said so on the Internet.

"It's good!" Concluded one person.

Another said the product "satisfies that Coca-Cola craving," just as Coca-Cola expected.

The last time the company changed the formula and packaging of the drink, in 2017, some consumers were also disappointed.

Still, Coke Zero has been growing its share of the US low-calorie soft drink market ever since, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor International.

Creating "a little bit of controversy online with social media users" can be a good thing for the brand, as long as loyal customers don't turn against Coke Zero, Stanford said.

You can also keep the focus on Coca-Cola, rather than your competitor.

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Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is still well ahead of Pepsi's version of the product.

According to Euromonitor International, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar had 21% of the market share of low-calorie soft drinks in the United States in 2020. Pepsi Zero Sugar failed to break into the top five brands on the list, including the leader Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Cherry Coke Zero and and the newcomer Zevia.

Although both Coke Zero and Diet Coke are calorie-free drinks, Diet Coke has its own flavor and followers, while Coke Zero is designed to mimic the taste of regular Coke.

During a July call with analysts to discuss second quarter results, PepsiCo CEO Ramón Laguarta said that Pepsi Zero Sugar and other sugar-free options are "winning favor with consumers," adding that the company will continue to investing in sugar-free options.

"PepsiCo will really bet on its Pepsi Zero Sugar offering," Stanford said.

"They're chasing that [zero sugar] market share. So Coca-Cola has to stay in their game to continue the growth of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar."

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-08-08

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