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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenobi65" data-source="post: 2628370" data-attributes="member: 1515">Have a can of Pepsi, and you'll get the general idea.I was in college, studying marketing at the time, and it was a great case-study-in-action.The braniacs at Coke decided that, to compete vs. Pepsi, they needed to taste more like Pepsi.  So, New Coke was sweeter than Coke, since Pepsi was / is sweeter than Coke.  (This was during the days of the original "Pepsi Challenge" TV ads, in which consumers in blind taste-tests preferred Pepsi.)Their market research showed them that their new formulation should have been a winner.  But, there were two things that they didn't consider:- As a general rule, sweeter things tend to win in head-to-head taste comparisons.- They negelected to consider how current, loyal Coke drinkers would react to the change in taste of Coke.  Most of those loyal Coke drinkers preferred the taste of Coke in the first place...and now it tasted like Pepsi!The uproar was massive, and, IIRC, they introduced "Coca-Cola Classic" (i.e., the old formula) within a month or so.  "New Coke" stayed on the market for a while (a decade or so, in some markets), but really never succeeded.  There are those who suggest that the entire debacle was planned, in order to generate PR for the Coke brand in general (and it certainly did that, intentionally or not).That's your Marketing 101 lesson for today, kids.  This is kenobi65, your old-geezer advertising guy, signing off. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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