For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

by Mark Pendergrast

  Changing Coke is just like breaking the American dream, like not selling hot dogs at a ball game.

  We want the old and wonderful Coke back PLEASE. Keep the “New” Coke if you want and call it Cokesi if you like. . . .

  For years, I have been what every company strives for: a brand-loyal consumer. I have purchased at least two cartons of Coke a week for as long as I can remember. . . . My “reward” for this loyalty is having the rug pulled out from under me. New Coke is absolutely AWFUL. . . . Don’t send me any coupons or any other inducements. You guys really blew it.

  Millions of dollars worth of advertising cannot overcome years of conditioning. Or in my case, generations. The old Coke is in the blood. Until you bring the old Coke back, I’m going to drink RC.

  Where’s the Fizz-zz-zz? What happened to the fizz? I MISS THE FIZZ!!!

  I do not drink alcoholic beverages, I don’t smoke, and I don’t chase other women, my only vice has been Coke. Now you have taken that pleasure from me.

  Who is this Roberto Goizueta and where did he come from that is Chairman? Who is Sergio? They don’t sound mainstream American. . . . OLD COKE IS IT AND THERE WILL NEVER BE ANYTHING TO TAKE ITS PLACE.

  Your bright marketing people will figure out that instead of converting Pepsi drinkers, you’re losing us Cokaholics to indifference if not suicide. . . . You’re just kidding, right? You did this as a stunt, to teach us all a lesson in humility and gratitude. . . . Well, OK, I get the point. You can stop any time now.

  Would it be right to rewrite the Constitution? The Bible? To me, changing the Coke formula is of such a serious nature.

  There are only two things in my life: God and Coca Cola. Now you have taken one of those things away from me.

  You Fucked Up! What you inherited WAS the real thing.

  Can you imagine anyone ordering Rum and Pepsi? I’ve been hearing such blasphemy.

  My dearest Coke: You have betrayed me. We went out just last week, as we had so often, and when we kissed I knew our love affair was over. . . . I remember walks across campus with you discussing life and love and all that matters. . . . I remember the southern summer nights we shared with breezes leaving beads of water hanging delicately from your body. . . . But, last week, I tasted betrayal on your lips: you had the smooth, seductive sweet taste of a lie. . . . You have become a prostitute, corrupted by money, denying your ideals.

  One retired Air Force officer, explaining how much Coca-Cola had meant to him, revealed that his will called for his cremated ashes to be sealed in a Coke can for interment in Arlington National Cemetery, but he was rethinking the matter. A more pragmatic writer said that Coca-Cola used to make an excellent douche. “Does the ‘New Formula’ Coke pack the same wallop?”* One enterprising correspondent included a blank signed check for up to $10 million, with a note: “Since you are no longer making Coca-Cola, perhaps you would like to sell me the recipe?”

  All along, the standard Coke response remained that New Coke, the better-tasting soft drink, had replaced the old formula. Period. The self-confident assertions masked anxiety bordering on panic by the end of June. Bottlers begged for the old drink back, since they were becoming social pariahs. In rural Alabama, a minister led his congregation in prayer for the local bottler’s soul, which was undoubtedly destined for hell. In Marietta, Georgia, a woman assaulted a Coke delivery man with her umbrella as he tried to stock a supermarket shelf with New Coke. “You bastard,” she screamed, “you ruined it, it tastes like shit!” When a nearby Pepsi driver laughed, she spun around. “You stay out of it! This is family business. Yours is worse than shit.” Clearly, something had to be done. “I’m sleeping like a baby,” Roberto Goizueta told his friends. “I wake up crying every hour.” Sergio Zyman, already quite thin, lost ten pounds during the month. Monitoring the consumer hot line, he staggered away in disbelief, muttering, “They talk as if Coca-Cola had just killed God.” In desperation, the chemists increased the acidity level in New Coke to give it more “bite,” but nothing helped. June’s sales plummeted, and Roy Stout’s surveys underscored that Coke’s image was slipping badly.

  THE SECOND COMING

  On Friday, July 5, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour devoted twenty minutes to the New Coke disaster, showing Mullins and his cronies pouring the drink out on the street. The protests were not subsiding, nor was the media’s negative coverage. Over the next week, the only real argument involved what to call the old formula when it returned. Dyson favored “original,” but the Company lawyers objected, since they suddenly saw a way to benefit from the situation. If they called it “classic,” as Goizueta ultimately determined, they could argue that it was an entirely new drink, not covered by the original contract. Schmidt and Bondurant would be outfoxed.

  Plans for Coca-Cola Classic leaked, and the Company had to issue a terse acknowledgment on July 10, a day before the scheduled press conference. Peter Jennings interrupted an ABC soap opera to bring America the news, while Arkansas senator David Pryor, in a speech sandwiched between debate over South African disinvestment and action on the Safe Drinking Water Act, solemnly declared that the return of the original formula was “a meaningful moment in American history.” Within the Company, employees rejoiced over what they termed the Second Coming. Thursday morning, virtually every newspaper in the country carried a front-page story on Classic Coke, bumping reports on President Reagan’s cancer operation out of the spotlight.

  The same day, the chastened Goizueta, Keough, and Dyson faced the press in Atlanta, less than three months after the glitzy New Coke debut at Lincoln Center. While Goizueta curtly told Americans, “We have heard you,” Keough stole the show by eloquently confessing just how badly the Company had miscalculated, speaking of the “passion” that had taken them by surprise and calling it “a lovely American enigma” which was no more measurable than “love, pride or patriotism.” Some, Keough said, portrayed this moment as a Company retreat, a victory of the little man over a giant corporation. “How I love that!” he said. “We love any retreat which has us rushing toward our best customers with the product they love most.” He concluded with an accurate prediction. “Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb and we are not that smart.” At the close of the press conference, a reporter asked Goizueta, “If you knew in April what you know now, would you have gone ahead with the reformulation?” The CEO deflected the question with a Spanish proverb from his grandfather: “Si mi abuela tuviera ruedas seria bicicleta,” which translated, “If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bicycle.”

  The euphoria following the return of old Coke surpassed the despair of the past three months. Supporters deluged Gay Mullins with celebratory bottles of Coke as he sprawled in a bathtub. A small airplane circled North Avenue headquarters with a banner reading, “THANK YOU, ROBERTO!” Dan Lauck heaved a sigh of relief, since he was down to a mere sixty-five cases. Eighteen thousand calls of gratitude jammed the toll-free line on the day of the announcement. Now the mail inundating the Company read like love letters. “Thank you for bringing old Coke back,” wrote one sixty-eight-year-old woman. “The only thing better is sex!” Astonished Coke marketer Ike Herbert remarked, “You would have thought we had invented a cure for cancer.”

  We love you for caring! You have given us back our dream! We are grateful. . . . You have made our hard lives easier to bear and have given us confidence in ourselves to change things for the better.

  I drank Coke the morning of my wedding to calm me. . . . My first request after the births of my two children was for a Coke on ice. I drank a Coke on the way to my father’s funeral. . . . You’ve made my day and I appreciate that.

  With the return of “Coca-Cola Classic,” you might say that the old coke has been “reincarbonated.”

  I feel like a lost friend is returning home.

  Thank God for Coca-Cola! We DO Have It GREAT in America!

  God does work in mysteriou
s ways and I thank him for answering my prayers to bring back the “real” Coke.

  The old Coke recipe reflects the love of every good American today. There is only one Holy Bible, one Elvis Presley, others have tried to copie them, but never quit make it.

  How can you say the old Coke is only liked by the older generation? I’m 13, the now generation. I happen to like old Coke the best!

  I am most pleased that you announced today that I will again be able to obtain the Coca-Cola I have been drinking since 1909. I am now 91½ years of age.

  Keough’s brilliant one-liner, asserting that the Company was neither that dumb nor that smart, was only half true. While a few analysts and consumers were certain that the Company had staged the entire fiasco simply to grab publicity and remind their loyal consumers how much Coca-Cola meant to them, the Company clearly did no such thing. Goizueta and colleagues had been “that dumb,” however, committing what Business Week termed “the marketing blunder of the decade.” Oddly enough, pride still blinded the executives. Despite the return of Coca-Cola Classic, they steadfastly maintained that New Coke would surge ahead.

  In his letter to shareholders confirming the original formula’s return, Goizueta insisted that New Coke (a term he despised) was “the best-tasting Coca-Cola we have ever made,” condescendingly referring to a group of older consumers who demanded “a taste of nostalgia.” Consequently, Coca-Cola Classic would appear “alongside our flagship brand, [New] Coca-Cola.” In an obvious attempt to minimize embarrassment, Goizueta illogically called the reintroduced Classic “the newest addition to the lineup of Coca-Cola branded products,” which he termed “the most formidable megabrand in the soft drink industry.” The Coke executives were so certain that New Coke would flourish that they cooperated with Thomas Oliver, the Atlanta Constitution business reporter who planned to knock out a quick book on the flavor change. Now, in the fall of 1985, he conducted lengthy interviews with Stout, Herbert, Zyman, Dyson, Keough, and Goizueta.

  A DRAMATIC COURTROOM TWIST AND OTHER DISASTERS

  Meanwhile, the legal battle between Bill Schmidt’s group of disaffected bottlers and the Company heated up. Under oath, Roberto Goizueta insisted that Coca-Cola was whatever he and the Company said it was. On April 22, 1985, it had been one formula, and the next day, it was something completely different. Now, the Company insisted that Coke Classic constituted a completely “new” drink with a different name, reserving the right for flexible pricing in the future. Emmet Bondurant dubbed this mentality “Alice in Wonderland thinking,” and quoted Lewis Carroll’s officious Humpty Dumpty, much to the amusement of Judge Murray Schwartz:

  “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

  “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

  “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

  An August ruling from the bench stunned Goizueta and his lawyers. Judge Schwartz ordered the Company to reveal the secret formula for virtually every cola drink it made, including Coca-Cola Classic, New Coke, Diet Coke, and all the decaffeinated versions. He could thus determine whether Diet Coke was, in fact, similar to Classic or New Coke, which would help legitimize the litigious bottlers’ claims. To no one’s surprise, Big Coke categorically refused. “The Company has never disclosed its formulae even to its own General Counsel,” wrote a Company lawyer, and it was not about to let a bunch of bottlers see them now. The media loved the drama. U.S. News & World Report printed a story about the Company’s “brazen defiance” along with a picture of a Trust Company guard inside the vault containing the famous formula. For the next eight months, the matter lay unresolved, since Judge Schwartz was reportedly incapacitated by a mysterious illness.

  At the same time, the embattled Company found itself mired in more controversy from an unexpected quarter—the result of the recent licensing program. The new line of Coca-Cola clothes, manufactured by Hong Kong’s Murjani International, caused a fashion sensation with their July debut. “Suddenly,” a Company trademark lawyer mused, “people are like walking billboards for the product.” Not only that, Murjani was paying Coca-Cola for the privilege. There was, however, a downside to Coca-Cola’s magical, symbolic name. Even as Americans proudly donned their hip clothing, Southern textile plants cried foul. How could the Company have allowed a foreign company to make these sweatshirts and pullovers, advertised as “All-American”? Coca-Cola officials quickly admitted their mistake and promised that Murjani would find domestic sources for its garments soon.

  Even a supposed coup turned sour. Coca-Cola had arranged for its new taste to travel aboard the space shuttle in a special can that permitted carbonation under zero-gravity conditions. It would be the first soft drink in space. NASA reneged on the promise, however, allowing Pepsi to go along for the ride as well. Furthermore, the astronauts complained that lukewarm cola wasn’t terribly satisfying.

  Roberto Goizueta smarted under the glee with which journalists jumped upon any negative news about Coca-Cola. At the Atlanta Constitution offices, the CEO had earned a reputation for thin skin, since he often sent reporters handwritten, pedantic corrections for the most minor inaccuracies. Company men recognized this trait as perfectionism, not petulance. Thin-skinned or not, Goizueta’s precise engineering mind did not understand feature writers and their penchant for human interest hooks. In October of 1985, addressing a national group of editors, he vented some of his frustration, beginning with a sarcastic reference to the publicity over New Coke. “How boring this past summer would have been for you,” he said, without the tumult over the changed formula. “Just picture those reporters on your staffs with little to do all summer long!” He proceeded to chide the media for “pandering to what is provocative,” preferring stylistic cuteness to objective investigation. “Journalists need to remember,” Goizueta lectured, that “they are entering quickly into other persons’ minds. They must understand this power they possess.” It didn’t seem to occur to the Coke executive that Coca-Cola commercials were subject to precisely the same criticism and had given the cue to newsmen by emphasizing image and the quick gloss.

  COKE ARE IT

  The return of the original formula as Coca-Cola Classic posed a major conundrum for Coke advertising. The New Coke disaster effectively killed the “Coke Is It” campaign, since it wasn’t quite clear which Coke was it. Newsweek’s headline declared, “Hey America, Coke Are It!” Nor could the Company rely on Cosby again. “May we now expect to see a commercial featuring Bill Cosby speaking from both sides of his mouth simultaneously?” a snide consumer inquired. During the fall of 1985, the ad men floundered with two weak “megabrand” slogans—“We’ve Got a Taste for You” and “Coke Belongs to You.” The commercials tried to push both colas at once, displaying New Coke and Classic together. Sergio Zyman lamely explained that both drinks shared “the same affection for and identification with the brand.” Ed Mellett, recently hired away from Pepsi as Coke’s new marketing chief, admitted that “we don’t know the relative role and importance of each sugared cola.”

  By year’s end, however, Classic was clearly surging while New Coke’s market share shrank. Worse, Pepsi-Cola had snagged the lead as the best-selling single sugar cola in America. The combined sales of Classic and New Coke still fell slightly below Coca-Cola’s comparable 1984 figures. As he hurried to finish his book, Thomas Oliver suddenly sensed a distinct chill at the Company. His calls weren’t returned, and several appointments were broken. “The Coca-Cola executives had been giving me a lot of information about why they had changed the formula,” Oliver recalled, “and I think they realized that they were supplying me with ammunition which could shoot their number one brand in the foot again.” In February of 1986, the McCann men abandoned their attempt to promote both colas at once. For New Coke, they exhorted consumers to “Catch the Wave,” a reference to the logo’
s dynamic ribbon. The curvy line was supposed to lead to New Coke, the “wave” of the future. “The advertising addresses the visionary,” Brian Dyson insisted, “those consumers who are peering into tomorrow.” To position New Coke as the “in” taste, he promoted commercials that united “high-tech promotion with highly contemporary imagery.”

  The new ads couldn’t find a center. Some showed people doodling or globbing catsup in the shape of the curve. In “Horizontal Pour,” an enormously expensive, slick production, a rugged hunk served a bikini-clad woman basking in a recliner—only he poured the Coke sideways through the house, and she caught the liquid in her empty glass. While the ad was a technical masterpiece, accomplished by turning a house on its side, it was practically devoid of content, a perfect New Wave product. Other ads for the new formula broke every rule, overtly comparing Coca-Cola with Pepsi. In one, a castaway on an island found a bottle of the rival soft drink. While Italian opera inexplicably blared in the background, the desperate man opened the bottle, dumped the drink onto the sand, and tossed the bottle with an SOS note into the surf. The tide, of course, returned a six-pack of Coke.

  As a final assault on viewers’ intelligence and sanity, the Company launched a series of New Coke commercials aimed primarily at teenagers, who were depicted as mindless zombies playing video games. On the screen, Max Headroom would suddenly appear—a smiling, simpering, narcissistic, computer fad with a dazzling smile, dark glasses, airbrushed hair, and an annoying stutter. The ads proved enormously popular with adoring teens, who imitated Headroom’s admonition to “C-C-Catch the Wave,” followed by a sigh or growl. At a mass meeting of “Cokeologists,” Headroom asked, “So what I want to know is, if you’re drinking Coke, who’s drinking Pepsi?” The commercials debuted on MTV and on David Letterman’s hip late-night show, testing extraordinarily well with high recall and brand association.