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The Disturbing History of Coca-Cola | MagnatesMedia | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The Disturbing History of Coca-Cola
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Summary
Core Theme
Coca-Cola's immense global success is not primarily due to its product but rather to its masterful, multi-century marketing strategy that sells an idea of happiness and togetherness, often overshadowing significant ethical and environmental controversies.
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Coca-Cola spend endless billions on
Advertising every year but will never
once try to sell you on their products
they sell an idea happiness Harmony
togetherness but some would say it's a
distraction from the disturbing truth
there were a lot of serious accusations
against the company that they've caused
disease droughts exploitation and much
much worse so buckle up we're going on a
journey through K's incredible history
spanning three different centuries we'll
be examining how coke Cola really became
one of the most recognized Brands ever
and at what cost because one thing is
for sure you don't build an Empire
selling sugar water by telling people the
the [Music]
truth King's eyes Coca-Cola gives you
that refreshing new feeling there's
Coca-Cola back in the 1880s there was a
bit of a backlash against doctors and
people started using home remedies
instead and a bunch of deceitful
entrepreneurs pounced on this
opportunity and started creating potions
in alexas that they claimed had a wide
variety of medical
benefits the truth was that they were
mostly dangerous ineffective concoctions
of various different chemicals but with
no regulation they could claim whatever
health benefits they wanted so business
was booming one popular patent medicine
was called Vin marani which contained a
mix of wine and cocaine that supposedly
cured almost any elment or sickness
whatsoever as long as you drank three
glasses every day and one person who
absolutely loved this drink was a man
named John pton a war veteran who had
been severely injured in battle the
doctors had actually thought he was
going to die and dosed him up on
morphine to try and mash the pain for
his final few hours but Jon somehow
survived however he did develop a
serious morphine addiction which is why
when he discovered viin Mariani he
became hooked on the drink he thought it
was helping him overcome his morphine
addiction and of course after drinking
it he really did feel better but that's
not because it was medicinal it's
because it contained wine and
cocaine but since pton loved the drink
and he was a chemist himself he decided
to create his own version and in 1884 he
launched French wine coca which was
basically a ripoff of VI Mariani with a
couple more ingredients added and yet
this knockoff drink would soon become
cocaa now to be fair to pton he wasn't
some snake or salesman trying to
deliberately rip people off he really
believed in his products however Pim
button's timing was terrible just a year
later prohibition hits with many states
banning alcohol pimberton had to take
the wine out of his drink and replace it
with carbonated water but this left the
drink tasting very bitter so he added a
that now that the wine was removed he
could continue selling French wine coca
but they needed a new name luckily
pemberton's bookkeeper Frank Robinson
came up with a catchy sounding
suggestion Coca-Cola now the company
would later claim that the name doesn't
mean anything and it's just a nice
sounding alliteration of course this
isn't true the name was a reference to
the drink's two main ingredients
the colon nut which contained caffeine
and the coca leaf which contained
cocaine to this day Coca-Cola deny their
formula has ever contained cocaine
despite the fact it's extremely well
documented it contained the coca leaf
which contains cocaine eventually by
1929 they would find a way to remove all
the active cocaine from the coca leaves
once it became clear that cocaine wasn't
quite the magical medicine they'd first
thought but back in the 1880s nobody was
worried about the cocaine in the Dr
so now that the wine had been removed
Coca-Cola could continue being sold the
only problem is not many people were
buying it pimberton was still trying to
sell people on the medicinal aspect of
the drink early ads for Coca-Cola
described it as a harmless wonderful
brain tonic that relieves headaches and
upset stomachs but sales were slow
because there were countless other
patent medicines offering the same thing
so coke didn't really stand out
meanwhile pimberton was becoming
increasingly ill his pain was worse and
his addiction growing stronger and by
1888 John pimpton was
dead the tragedy is he had absolutely no
idea that his drink would soon become
one of the most well-known drinks on the
entire planet [Music]
right before pton died he sold the
company for
$2,300 to an ambitious workaholic named
Asa Candler kandler then began buying
out any outstanding shares owned by
other people so he could have the
company fully under his control later
investigations would find that canler
may not have really bought all those
shares as some of the documents
contained Forge signatures we may never
know exactly what happened because
Candler then had the early records of
the company burned most likely to cover
his track
but all that was irrelevant Because by
the 1890s ACA Candler was fully in
charge of Coca-Cola but remember the
drink wasn't actually that popular at
first so Candler started filling the
town with Coke branded banners
Billboards and placards they even
painted the logo on barns and basically
plastered the Coca-Cola logo on anything
they could so people started seeing the
logo everywhere they went but one of
Coke's first Strokes of marketing genius
was to contact every Pharmacy in the
area get a list of their top customers
and send them a free coupon for
Coca-Cola the logic was that by giving
people a free trial they'd become
customers for life especially since the
drink contains several addictive
chemicals however it soon became clear
that advertising Coca-Cola as a medicine
was the wrong strategy rather than just
Market to people who were ill they could
Market it to everyone by simply
positioning it as a tasty relaxing drink
that anyone could enjoy this had the
added benefit of disassociating
Coca-Cola from the patent medicine
industry which would soon face a lot of
scrutiny once people realize that most
of their claims were complete lies
Coca-Cola's Mass marketing strategy was
a huge hit as the SES started to grow
rapidly kandler reinvested more and more
money into advertising and even started
paying movie stars and athletes to
endorse the drink is that Coca-Cola yes
sir so much of coke success has been
about creating such a positive wholesome
image in people's minds of what the
drink represents and what better way to
do that than pay popular celebrities to
recommend drink they even started
heavily featuring Santa Claus in their
ads at Christmas always holding a Coke
to make the connection in young kids
Minds between Coca-Cola and the joy of
Christmas of course none of this
marketing may sound particularly special
but at the time it was Coca-Cola
pioneered many marketing strategies that
soon became common place for example sex
sales may be an advertising cliche these
days but very few mainstream companies
exploited this as much as cope did with
their use of Coca-Cola girls attractive
women who always had a Coke in hand Coke
even created a statistical Department to
analyze car traffic and movement in
supermarkets so they could determine the
most effective places to put their ads
and as new technology was introduced
from radios to TV Coke was always ready
to throw money into advertising on these
new mediums to ensure everyone
everywhere knew about its product
initially though Coke was mostly sold in
soda fountains this allowed Coke to save
huge amounts of money because they
simply had to distribute the syrup and
then it would be mixed with carbonated
water by whoever was selling it so the
shipping and distribution cost for Coke
were much lower but then one day two
lawyers named Benjamin and Joseph came
to ASA kandler with an idea let's bottle
it kendler thought this was a really
dumb idea bottling was very expensive
and complicated but Benjamin and Joseph
said they would take on all the cost and
risk themselves so kandler agreed and
signed a contract granting them full
bottling rights for Coca-Cola for just a
nominal fee of $1 kendler figured he had
nothing to lose in the unlikely scenario
that this bottling idea actually went
well it simply meant he would sell lots
more of the coke syrup of course as we
now know bottled Coke wasn't
unimaginably huge success customers Lov
to bottle Coke so at first this was
great for kler it meant the bottlers
were buying loads and loads of coke
syrup from him and this was a great
Revenue stream for the business but
there was one very major problem because
kandler hadn't believed bottl and Coke
would work he'd put almost no thought
into the contract he signed so there was
no time frame set on the deal and no
mention about changing the price if the
cost to produce the coke syrup increased
what this meant is that ACA Candler had
given the bottlers a NeverEnding
contract to supply them with Coke syrup
at the same low price no matter how much
the cost of the raw ingredients went up
this would lead to multiple lawsuits
Between Coke and its bottlers over the
next few decades the Coca-Cola Company
would end up paying countless millions
of dollarss to buy back some of the
rights that kandler had sold away for
just $1 but back in the early 1900s this
wasn't a worry for Candler because sales
of Coca-Cola were higher than ever and
growing every year of course this wasn't
really because of the product there were
countless very similar drinks out there
I remember Coca-Cola was a knockoff of
another drink anyway the reason for the
rapid growth was marketing every single
year Coca-Cola spent more and more money
on advertising and every single year
sales of Coca-Cola grew however arguably
Coca-Cola's biggest successes of all
Source once the second world war broke
out it was announced sugar would be
rationed however Coca-Cola made the
Absurd claim that they should be exempt
from the sugar rationing because Coke
was an essential wartime product and
even more absurdly the government agreed
this was largely because Coca-Cola spent
huge amounts of money on lobbying the
government kooch funded countless
studies to try and convince the
government of Koch's benefits and they
claimed that Koke would keep up morale
and provide an energy boost for soldiers
eventually the US government agreed to
appoint a Coca-Cola executive onto the
rationing board who then gave Coca-Cola
an exemption from sugar rationing whilst
every other company had to reduce the
quantities of sugar they used during the
war and Coca-Cola didn't stop there K's
president publicly promised we will see
the every man in uniform gets a bottle
of Coca-Cola for 5 cents wherever he is
and whatever it costs our company now by
selling at this low price Coca-Cola
would lose money on each drink sold and
yet this decision was absolutely genius
firstly in the eyes of the public and
especially soldiers it created a strong
connection between kooch and the war
effort and helped kooch gain huge public
support and Goodwill in the minds of
millions of Americans Koch and
patriotism became connected Koch seized
upon this opportunity to run new wartime
ads showing soldiers holding Coke
bottles but not just that behind the
scenes Koke had made a deal with the
government about getting money to help
them set up Coca-Cola Bottling plants
overseas they claimed it would spread
American influence and boost Soldier
morale but what it really meant is the
tax payout was helping to fund K's
International expansion during the war
64 Coke bottling plants were set up
around the world on different continents
mostly funded by the government in fact
the technicians who installed Coca-Cola
plants during the war were deemed just
as vital as the people who were fixing
tanks and planes and because Coke was
now accessible to soldiers wherever they
were in the world they started sharing
the drink with the locals helping Coke's
expansion into even more new countries
the soldiers were so thankful for Coke
sending them A Taste of Home during the
hell of war that they became the drink's biggest
biggest
Advocates the US military basically
became a Coca-Cola sales force
introducing new people to Coke wherever
they went so whilst the war had a
devastating impact on most companies and
people Coca-Cola were expanding faster
than ever all over the globe as of today
there's only two countries in the world
that don't sell Coke Cuba and North
Korea and that the deals Coke made
during the war were largely responsible
for Coke's rapid Global expansion across
the planet now there's just one tiny
little problem with this heartwarming
idea of Coca-Cola as a patriotic company
looking out for American soldiers which
is that during the war the Coca-Cola
company was supplying Nazi Germany with
Coke as well yep whilst in the US Coke
were preaching about supporting the
troops in Germany they were busy trying
to disassociate themselves from anything
American and often showed the coke logo
alongside swers Coke was even
distributed at Hitler Youth rallies and
advertised on Nazi educational pamphlets
Coca-Cola was literally playing both
sides after all Germany was a huge
market for them however as the war
progressed restrictions were introduced
that cut off the supply for many Goods
to Germany for most multinational
corporations this meant they couldn't
sell their products to Germans anymore
but the head of kooch's biggest bottling
operation in Germany a man named Max Kai
had an idea to counteract these
restrictions he got local chemists to
create a new drink that was vaguely
similar to Coke but rather than being
made with the coke syrup which could no
longer be imported it was instead made
from the leftover scraps from other food
produce like apple fiber this new drink
would later be named
Fanta and since so many other drinks had
been banned because of the war Fanta
became a huge hit in Nazi Germany some
sources even suggest that kyth used
Force labor from concentration camps to
help produce it what we know for sure is
that at the end of the war the profits
of this new Fanta drink all went back to
the Coca-Cola headquarters and Max was
given a promotion in the Coca-Cola
Company and by 1955 Koch was selling
Fanta in many different countries around
the world of course like so much of
their history Koke tried to distance
themselves from what really
happened however Coca-Cola would never
have been able to expand across the
world so rapidly if they didn't have a
team of polygot who could speak multiple
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story Koke will try to tell you that
their biggest secret is the drink secret
formula which is hidden in a high
Security Vault for dramatic effect but
the formula isn't that secret it's on
Wikipedia of course Coca-Cola success
has very little to do with the formula
you could create a clone product but
you're never going to be able to compete
with them let's look at why one day a
teacher a new school suggested to the
Headmaster they add some healthier
choices to the school vending machines
like some fruit juices she was horrified
when she was told it wouldn't be
possible because the school had an
exclusive contract with Coca-Cola Koch
paid the school 3,00 000 a year or
around $1 per student in order to
dictate which product the school sold it
turns out contracts like this had been
struck with countless different schools
as part of Coke's Cradle to grave
strategy basically the best way to make
someone a Coke customer for life is to
ensure they drink it from the earliest
age possible one Coke marketing Chief
pointed out that it's far easier to get
them at a young vulnerable age to become
a Coke customer for life than try to
convert them later on when they're older
in some of the contracts the school
could even earn additional money by
selling more Coca-Cola to its kids and
since many schools were underfunded and
in desperate need of money they would
shell Coke's products to their children
this is just one of many ways Koke have
managed to circumvent the rules about
advertising to children another way is
that Koke has produced countless
collector's items including Barbie dolls
playing cars board games delivery trucks
and other toys that they claim are for
adults then of course there's all the
Christmas ads deliberately tying Santa
and Coca-Cola together in the minds of
impressionable children in 1982 K even
bought Columbia Pictures so they could
easily integrate product placement into
their films although they later sold the
film studio and decided just to pay
other companies for Coke product
placement instead but product placement
in family films is a clever loophole
that allows them to circumvent rules
about targeting children and it works
research has shown that even for babies
Koke is one of the most recognized
brands in the world but back in the'80s
a problem was emerging for Coke more and
more data was piling up about the
negative negative health effects Coke
was having there had always been
concerns about Coke rotting your teeth
but new data was showing the serious
effects Coke was having on Obesity
diabetes and a string of other health
issues for example one study of children
found that even just one extra sugary
soft drink a day gave them a 60% greater
chance of becoming overweight another
showed that if babies are exposed to a
high intake of sugar they will be
conditioned to depend on sugar for the
lives for a brand that is built upon its
image of wholesomeness it was a major
setback being so directly connected to
such a wide variety of health problems
especially since Koke was actively
pursuing a strategy of offering bigger
and bigger portion sizes of its drink it
also didn't help that the drink
contained caffeine Coca-Cola claimed
that this was purely for Taste purposes
but in blind taste tests people couldn't
tell the difference with a
non-caffeinated version this left some
people wondering why Coke continue to
add this addictive caffeine to a drink
that's being sold so much to kids
however the soda industry had come to a
similar realization that the tobacco
industry had come to it's easier to cast
doubt on the science than debate on
policies because you can always just
claim that more research is needed so
behind the scenes Koke was pouring
hundreds of thousands of dollars into
studies to cast doubts on the connection
between soft drinks and obesity and
diabetes unsurprisingly the studies paid
for by Coke generally claimed that coke
wasn't causing many health problems
however they conveniently didn't mention
who'd funded those studies
Coke also spent endless millions of
dollars on lobbying State officials
against sugar taxes and stronger dietary
guidelines they reportedly made deals
behind closed doors about donating to
certain politicians campaigns in favor
of special treatment for Coke they also
continue to throw billions of dollars
into sponsoring athletes and major
sporting events to try and create the
illusion of a connection between great
Coca-Cola however K good sense they
could only store for so long before the
science became too undeniable to dispute
so they began expanding into other
drinks for example a bottled water brand
called danani however this immediately
backfired when it launched in the UK as
it was quickly discovered that this
expensive bottled water had essentially
just come out of a local tap now cat
tried to defend itself by explaining
they run the water through some kind of
purification process but this just made
things worse because it turns out they'd
accidentally added a bad batch of
minerals that contaminated the water as
a result of half a million bottles in
circulation had to be withdrawn from
shops over safety fears in other words
Coke's attempt to produce a healthy
drink had ended up with them being
accused of selling expensive
contaminated tap water however this
wasn't the worst of Coke's contamination
problems in 1999 in Belgium children
started becoming ill after drinking
Coca-Cola eventually leading to the
recall of all Coke products France also
reported more than 100 people sick from
bad coke and temporarily banned their
products as well the company was very
very slow to respond to any of these
issues and was accused of not taking the
problem seriously enough then in India
Koch was accused of contaminating the
ground water with Wastewater Koke
actually admitted they had a Wastewater
issue but insisted they'd fix the
problem however later independent tests
still found traces of toxic sludge
produced at Coca-Cola's Indian plants
which reportedly has made the land baren
killed local animals that drank it and
destroyed the livelihoods of local
farmers the Center for Science and
environment in New Delhi also announced
it found pesticide in both Coke and
Pepsi that if consumed over a long
enough period could cause cancer birth
defects and severe disruption to the
immune system one woman from a local
Village told journalists before this
company came our lives were comfortable
and beautiful after the company came
within 6 months the taste of the water
changed another said when we bathe our
heads swim it pains and we scratch all
over and Koch's environmental record
continued to get worse you see the
company also runs bottling plants in
several drought played daras and
officials have blamed Coke for a
dramatic decline in available water this
problem was particularly bad in parts of
Mexico because between 2000 and 2006
Mexico's president was a man who'd
formerly been the head of Coca-Cola
Mexico the president started giving his
former company favorable treatment after
getting elected and during his
presidency he gave Coca-Cola 27 water
concessions which many claim allowed
Coke to pollute water and even steal
water owned by indigenous people one
local resident claimed there used to be
a lot of water here now there is a
scarcity they are not paying anything
and they are just taking our water away
during this presidency Coke sales
increased 50% and became the most
popular drink in the country critics
claim this is yet another example of
coke benefiting from Shady deals with
politicians of course Coca-Cola has
always had to acquire vast quantities of
Natural Resources in order to succeed in
fact it's the largest sugar buyer in the
world however as the '90s arrived Coke
began to face yet more negative
publicity for example in Mexico City one
shopkeeper said she was told her
deliveries of coke would stop unless she
removed an alternative Cola from her
store meanwhile in Brazil Coke TRS a new
type of vending machine that would
increase the price of coke depending on
how hot it was outside also to further
boost sales figures and trick investors
Coke engaged in Channel stuffing forcing
Distributors to buy more syrup than they
needed at the end of quarters to make
kooch's profits look better than they
really were however the backlash against
kooch reached its p when in 2003 a
campaign was launched called stop killer
Coke that claimed the Coca-Cola company
was responsible for the murder of union
members who worked in Coke bottling
plants in Colombia now Coke deny this
and the exact truth remains unclear but
what we do know is that since 1989
countless unionized workers employed at
the Coca-Cola Bottling plants in
Colombia have been killed and many more
have received death threats in fact in
2001 the international labor rights fund
filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola
Butlers claiming they'd openly engaged
death squads to intimidate torture
kidnap and even murder Union officials
in Latin America a few years later
another lawsuit was brought about by
Guatemalan workers alleging that they
and their families at the cocone
bottling plant had been victims of
violence after the workers decided to
join unions they wanted to join a union
because some workers were earning just
$15 per day for 15-hour shifts however
again there were allegations of kidnap
torture and murder of union leaders and
their family members now Coca-Cola argue
that the Guatemalan plant is
independently owned and kooch had
absolutely no knowledge of these
incidents and kooch genuinely may be
telling the truth there we don't know if
they actually colluded or knew about the
violence or if they just indirectly
benefited but either way the unions have
been decimated by the attacks and
threats and in parts of Latin America
Koko has been referred to as the sparkle
of death what we do know for sure is
that the deeper you look into K's past
the more you chip away at their
wholesome image they try to present for
example ACA Candler the entrepreneur who
Incorporated the Coca-Cola company and
played a pivotal role in popularizing
the drink once said the most beautiful
site that we see is the child at Labor
the younger the boy began work the more
beautiful however before we all get the
pitchforks out I think it's important to
acknowledge that if you look at any
giant company with such a long history
you're probably going to find some
ethical disasters in their past that's
not an excuse but a reminder that
business is brutal many of the same
criticisms of Koch also apply to many of
their competitors
and of course Koke has done plenty of
good for the world too we can't come to
conclusions from just one side of the
story it's never black and white what's
ironic though is that some of the worst
press Coca-Cola has ever received was
nothing to do with any of these moral or
legal issues nope Coke's biggest
backlash of all came from changing the
the Coca-Cola company has been offered
the chance to buy Pepsi's business
multiple times including for only
$50,000 in 1933 but Koch turned them
down instead Coke tried to sue Pepsi for
using the word Cola in their ads
claiming that they were trying to rip
off Coca-Cola's product this backfired
when Pepsi countered that Koke was using
anti-competitive tactics to build a
monopoly the courts agreed and ruled
that Cola was a generic term anyone
could use however since Koke missed
their chance to buy Pepsi they ended up
getting locked in an ongoing marketing
battle with them a one point Koke and
Pepsi both started cutting their prices
and offering discounts to try and
compete with each other but they soon
realized this was hurting both of them
whether they made a secret deal behind
closed doors or not is unknown but soon
they both reverted back to their normal
pricing and tried to compete on
Advertising instead but eventually Pepsi
had the simple but genius idea to
actually compete on taste in 19 1975
Pepsi launched the Pepsi challenge where
they gave people two white cups one
containing Pepsi and one containing
Coca-Cola people didn't know which was
which and were encouraged to taste both
to see which they preferred the test
results showed that Pepsi was preferred
by slightly more people and so Pepsi
started using the stat in all of their
advertising and all across America more
people pick Pepsi Time After Time After
Time pep Coke completely denied this was
true but when they conducted their own
tests they found that Pepsi did indeed
score slightly higher in a blind taste
test meanwhile Coca-Cola was slowly but
steadily losing market share they tried
everything huge marketing campaigns and
price promotions but every year Coke's
market share slightly declined and Pepsi
slightly increased it started to seem
that perhaps the Pepsi challenge was
right the problem was that more people
simply preferred the taste of Pepsi and
thus Coca-Cola began an incredibly
secret mission they were going to change
Coke's formula after rigorous testing
and trials they discovered a new color for
for
that consistently performed better than
both original Coke and
Pepsi over and over they repeated the
blind tase test and the data was clear
the new formula was more popular and so
just short of Coca-Cola's 100-year
anniversary they did the unthinkable
they changed the Coca-Cola formula and
replaced it with new Coke Coca-Cola is
about to announce what it called the
most significant development in its
history Pepsi Cola says Coke is merely
trying to match Pepsi's success these
two products Pepsi and Coke have been
going at it eyeball to eyeball and in my
view the other guy just blinked and
immediately the chaos began every single
day thousands of phone calls and letters
arrived at kooch's offices they were a
mixture of distraught people begging for
the old version of K Mac and people who
were downright Furious kke had had the
nerve to take away the original formula
Koke expected the Uproar would soon die
down especially once people actually
tried the new formula but the outrage
simply intensified the media was equally
full of out ra reports and at the coke
phone lines that were constantly jammed
with complaints for months when new Coke
advertisements were shown on giant
screens and stadiums people loudly booed
it became popular to hate New Coke of
course many of the people complaining
hadn't even tried the new formula as one
Coke employee put it we could have
introduced The Elixir of the Gods and it
wouldn't have made any difference it was
soon very clear that taste hadn't been
the issue it didn't matter if New Coke
technically tasted better in blind taste
tests Coke success had never been about
taste in the first place thanks to its
incredible marketing the world viewed
Coca-Cola as an old friend a piece of
everyday life for around a 100 years
Coke had been present never changing no
matter what was going on in the world it
was an icon and changing something that
meant so much to people was considered a
betrayal one angry letter commented that
changing Coke is like making the grass
purple another claimed you've taken away
my childhood even months later the
protests were not dying down and it soon
became clear the company had to revert
back to the old formula they had made a
gigantic mistake there were very few
instances in history of such strong
backlash against the company's decision
and yet despite that the new coch
disaster ended up being one of kooch's
greatest marketing triumphs you see when
Coke caved in and brought back the
original formula under the name classic
Coke suddenly all of the anger turned to
Euphoria and praise suddenly all the
letters and phone calls arriving at the
company were filled with adoring fans
thanking the company and commenting how
much it meant to them one Coke marketer
said you would have thought we'd
invented a cure for cancer immediately
after reintroducing the old flavor Coke
sales dramatically increased business
week named the whole thing the marketing
blunder of the decade but some skeptical
analysts felt the company had staged the
entire thing for publicity and to remind
customers how much coke means to them if
the hor stunt really was planned it
would be one of the greatest marketing
strategies imaginable but that was not
the case at all new Coke was a
catastrophic misjudgment by Coke they
really had thought people would prefer
New Coke in fact even after they
reintroduced the classic version they
kept New Coke available in shops as well
because they thought once people
actually had more time to try the new
flavor eventually people would convert
to the new formula I'm Don K president
of the Coca-Cola Company when we brought
you the new Taste of coke we knew that
Millions would prefer it and millions do
and we knew that it would beat the taste
of our major competitor and it does what
we didn't know was how many thousands of
you would phone and write asking us to
bring back the classic Taste of original
Coca-Cola well we read and we listened
and you know the rest they're both yours
the new Taste of coke and Coca-Cola
classic your right of choice is back but
they were wrong again cells of New Coke
never improved and eventually it was
removed from circulation completely
however despite being so completely
wrong the end result was that New Coke
had unintentionally made people realize
how much they loved original Coke the
whole thing helped people feel more
attached and loyal to Coke than ever
before which is why New Coke was one of
the most successful mistakes ever but
here is the craziest part of all this it
was proven time and time again that in a
test where people didn't know which
drink was which people rate New Coke the
best Pepsi second and original Coke
third and yet customers had
overwhelmingly decided they wanted
original Coke they wanted the drink they
like the taste of the least and that is
the biggest compliment Coca-Cola's
marketing could ever hope to get the
image of coke they created in people's
minds is so powerful that it overrides
tast logic or data in many ways Coke was
still operating off the same principle
that the patent medicine industry had
used all those years ago it's not about
what your product really is it's about
what your customer thinks your product
is it's about what it represents and
that's the reason Coke continue to spend
billions and billions on Advertising
every year even though around 94% of the
world's entire population recognized the
cat logo already and over two billion
servings of Coca-Cola is drunk every day
Coke is built on an image that needs to
be constantly reinforced because sure
you can hear about Coke's devastating
impact on the health of children their
lobbying of governments and countless
controversies they've tried to sweep
under the carpet but does it really make
any difference because ultimately Coke
have never tried to sell you on their
sugar water they sell you on the good
times friends family and happy memories
Coke positions itself as an old friend
and hey what's a little controversy between
between
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