Coca Cola turns their fuck up into a new hype
Marketing has many ways. And this time Coca Cola is inspired to transform one of their biggest failures into a whole new wave for advertising.
In the summer of 1985, Coca-Cola changed the formula of its core product and dubbed it New Coke. It was an idea nobody asked for and, it turned out, nobody wanted. New Coke lasted just 79 days on the market before being jerked off from shelves, a huge fuck up. Until now.
Thirty-four years later new coke is back on track. But now it’s not just a piece of shit, it’s a piece of shit with a historical background. Back in 1985, Coca Cola was getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Diet Coke, which was a huge success three years ago, was a hit as boomers sought out healthier alternatives. Since the end of World War II, Coke had steadily lost market share to Pepsi, especially among younger drinkers. Cola had started to shit their pants.
“The company was willing to change everything,” Sergio Zyman, the charismatic former chief marketer of Coca-Cola said to Ad Age in 2011. “The only thing left was to change the product or change the advertising.”
The shit-storm was as furious as it was fast rising: The company received more than 40,000 calls and letters, including more than 1,500 calls a day to the 1-800-GET-COKE hotline, according to the historical account “The Real Thing: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company.” Pepsi piled on, joking that Coke had admitted that it is not, in fact, the real thing. The company gave the fuck up announcing the return of the original formula on July 11.
The beverage giant is now celebrating its epic miscalculation with some savvy marketing, in a partnership with Netflix’s sci-fi thriller “Stranger Things.” New Coke will be woven through several episodes of the third season of the original series, bowing on July 4, which is set in the summer of 1985. And as part of the deal, Coca-Cola will bring back the beverage for a limited time.
