What is with Vanilla Coke? Vivek Oberoi and his retro ‘wakau’ act? I’d like to buy the world an ice-cream flavoured Vanilla Coke just doesn’t ring right…. Curious – what is the idea behind Vanilla Coke? Traditional cola drinkers? Non cola drinkers but ice-cream eaters? Pepsi loyalists?
Seems to me whenever Coke is faced with falling market shares, the buzz goes around the company, time for a variant. Just to make consumers realize, it could be so much worse…
As the New Coke fiasco proved. To combat declining market shares (caused by both Pepsi’s corresponding increasing sales as well as Diet Coke’s cannibalization into Coke), New Coke was launched in 1985. And as the world knows, Americans suddenly discovered and proclaimed their love for the original Coke and New Coke took a severe beating. Never mind that in blind taste tests, consumers consistently said that they liked the new formula better. Never mind also that these consumers were not drinking Coke then, but Diet Coke or Pepsi. Such was the bad feeling towards New Coke that Donald Keough (then the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer) said: The passion for original Coca-Cola — and that is the word for it, passion — was something that caught us by surprise . . . It is a wonderful American mystery, a lovely American enigma, and you cannot measure it any more than you can measure love, pride, or patriotism. Back came the original Coca Cola as Classic Coke.
Makes me wonder, is there any Indian brand that inspires the same kind of emotion in people… For God, Country and…? Chandru, think about this?
And to think Coca Cola was invented by John Pemberton, a pharmacist, as a cure for head aches….. and initially sold as a ‘brain and nerve tonic’. And coloured sugar water has never been the same again… Speaking of which, I read somewhere that a 500 ml glass of Coke (or a similar drink) contains 8 teaspoons of sugar…. So what does diet Coke have – 6.5 spoonfuls as compared to the customary 8?
(Rather rambling post…. Started off somewhere and been drifting ever since…. But, a few global questions I was thinking of along the way….
How is Vanilla Coke and how is it doing in the market?
What makes for such emotional attachment with a brand? And what can advertising do for such a brand?
And finally, why do people actually like drinking coloured water with 8 teaspoons of sugar and various Unidentified Floating Objects?)
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