Lesson: Be yourself... In 1985, The Coca-Cola Company decided to change the near 100-year-old taste and formula for Coke. All hell broke loose... They didn't just do this on a whim. They had been steadily losing marketing share to other competing cola products, especially to Pepsi – which the younger generation of cola drinkers preferred. After WWII, Coca-Cola's share was 60%, but by the 1980's it has sunk closer to 20%. And in blind taste tests, consumers preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi to Coke. In an attempt to arrest this trend, they decided to copy Pepsi and taste more like it. So they retired the Coca-Cola everyone had known for generations and introduced one with a new flavour called "New Coke". It was a marketing disaster and consumers were outraged... The Coca-Cola company received over 40,000 letters and phone calls from angry customers. There were boycotts and people pouring the drink in the streets in protest. A psychiatrist who they hired to evaluate the calls reported that some callers sounded like they were discussing the passing of a loved one. Some guy named Gay Mullins filed a class action lawsuit and spent $100,000 of his own money pursuing it. Even Fidel Castro, a regular Coke drinker, chimed in that this was a sign of American capitalist decadence. When the old stock of the original Coke ran out in the US, where New Coke was initially introduced, consumers started importing it from overseas markets where the new one had not yet been introduced... There was even the real prospect of their bottlers boycotting them. Finally, reading the tea leaves, the Coca-Cola Company capitulated and reintroduced the original Coke formula 79 days after discontinuing it. "Imitation is suicide." ––– Ralph Waldo Emerson
