Pffft. I am not on the board of directors at Coca-Cola, and therefore I shouldn't have a say in their internal concerns such as whether or not the abomination that was "New Coke" should be resurrected.
I'd have chosen a different comparison if I were you. Believe it or not, folks, it
was the general
public that had the original say as to whether the
original Coke should be resurrected. It took a mere
three months for then-Coke chairman Roberto Goizueta to eat humble pie after the uproar
went nuclear:
Today, we have two messages to deliver to the American public. First, to those of you who are
drinking Coca-Cola with its great new taste, our thanks . . . But there is a second group of consumers
to whom we want to speak today and our message to this group is simple: We have heard you.And Goizueta's COO Daniel Keough ate a slice enough to make Goizueta's look like a tiny sample:
What on earth brought us to the decision to bring back the classic taste which we so calmly
abandoned back in April? . . . The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into
consumer research could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding attachment to original (Coke)
. . . 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.You can get the full story---
New York called it the story of how Coke blundered into one of
the greatest marketing triumphs ever---in Thomas Oliver's
The Real Coke, The Real Story.
There
are times when the public ends up having a big say in how a given company does
business, even if they're not on the boards of directors. (p.s. New Coke, which was subsequently
re-branded Coke II, died a quiet death in 2002. Its death was a lot more quiet than its birth. The
clamour to resurrect Coke II since has been an even more deafening silence . . .)
