This is a can of coke you probably won't even realize this until I show you the

Current can but this can is about 10 years old here's the current can hard to

Tell the difference unless you see them

together but speaking of differences there's one massive difference between these two cans the older
one has the word classic and the new one doesn't may not seem like a big difference but that one words
what this entire video is about Coca-Cola has been around since 1886 you ‘reheard that right it's older
than anyone watching this it's one of the most recognizable products and logos in the world its Coca
Cola practically everyone watching this is familiar with it it’s so massive that in certain parts of the
United States people use it in place of the word for all sodas one person can say hey do you want a coke
and the response will be sure what kinds of coked you have to which the other person says I've got
sprite and orange Krishan the reply is I'll have sprite that’s my favorite coke and the other person will
bring it over and say here's your coke and the receiver says thanks for the coke even though it's bright
okay so they don't say it that often but even saying it once seems confusingto me it's one of the few
words thatwould be confusing in that situation butif people are replacing the word sodawith the word
coke that means that cokeis doing pretty well so here we have oneof the biggest well known loved
brandsthe world has ever seen in 1985 theywere approaching 100 years withoutchanging the recipe or
the taste in anymajor way it was the taste that everyoneloved and had become accustomed to butjust
before they hit that 100 year markthey decided to make one change and thatwas to change the recipe in
a way thatmade it taste completely different noexaggeration here the Coca Cola Companypulled the
traditional soda from allNorth American shelves and replaced itwith an entirely new Cola they told
thepublic it was happenedand made no effort to hide it all thenew cans of coke were clearly labeledwith
a tag that said new and the productbecame known as new coke this has got tobe the boldest consumer
product smoothof any kind of any strife since Evestarted to hand out apples so now allthe people that
were loyal to this sodafor possibly even 100 years could nolonger buy it their only option was thisnew
offering from coke or switching toPepsi or another competitor now the ideaof this sounds insane and I
promise youthis is exactly what happened coca-colaall at once abandoned their recipe andtheir
customers were outraged at thispoint you might be thinking that theexecutives at coca-cola completely
losttheir minds but it all makes a littlemore sense when you hear their side of the story as most
companies do coke wasconducting taste tests for theirproducts the kind of thing where youplace two
unmarked sodas in front ofsomeone and ask them which one theyprefer through these tests they
wereable to create something that peopleactually liked more than coke they wouldgive someone one
cup with coke and onecup with the new drink and most of thetime they would prefer the new drinkthey
would also compare both of thesedrinks with Pepsi and the winner wasusually this new soda the fact
that Cokecreated something that people liked morethan Pepsi was a huge plusthe battle between Coke
and Pepsi hadbeen going on for years and continuestoday it's such an in-depth rivalry thatit may be the
subject of one of myfuture videosso when Coke had finally createdsomething that was better than Coke
andPepsi it was big news but how shouldthey handle this they have somethingpotentially massive on
their hands and need to handle it carefully what most of us are probably thinking right now is that they
should have kept the original coke and introduced the new drink as well a new drink put new coke on
the shelves but keep the original coke there as well but in the 1980s things were little different than they
are today there weren't 18 different kinds of Oreos and twelve different kinds of Captain Crunch so
today introducing a new kind of Cokes no big but thirty years ago it was remember that Coke and Pepsi
are huge competitors and whichever one is able to say theysell more than the other gains a
hugemarketing advantage a Pepsi commercialor billboard that says that they sellmore than coke carries
a lot of weightway more than it would today and eventoday it would be an effective campaignso Coke
was beating Pepsi by a smallmargin and desperately wanted to keep itthat way through most of the 99
years ofCoca Cola they sold just that Coca Colaa few years earlier they introduced DietCoke and were
just now introducingCherry Coke now these products were goodfor the company but they took away
salesfrom regular coke and we're helpingPepsi close that gap I know it's astrange scenario but Coke was
takingsales away from themselves and Pepsi wasgetting closer to being able to claimthat regular Pepsi
out sells regularcoke so introducing this new coke as yetanother coke product would almostcertainly
take sales away from theregular coke and ultimately help PepsiCoke doesn't want to help Pepsi so
theydidn't want to do this so the questioncomes back to how do they handle thisgreat tasting new
beverage the otheridea going around at the time is thatthey could slowly transform the oldproduct into
the new product gradually and not bring any attention to it but they concluded that it would be too
difficult to do without anyone noticing and I would expect that some of those transitional sodas may
have questionable taste as well well at this point replacing old coke with new coke doesn’t sound quite
as crazy anymore and I have to admit it was a risky move but not crazy move it could potentially have
big payoff so they went through with it they replaced their old product with this new better tasting
product yes more people all across the country when comparing coke to Pepsi chose the taste of coke as
the better taste let's look at it this way we gave America a choice and more people said Kohl is in and it
didn’t work initially the sales were good but it could have been from curious people buying the new
product overall there was a huge backlash so were the taste tests wrong was this actually an inferior
product I don't think so but there's theories that they were the new drink was sweeter and maybe good
in small amounts like they would give the tests but after a while people get tired of that this idea is
possible but that’s not the real issue the real issue is the fact that they got rid of regular coke the core of
their company that people had grown to love the new drink was probably better tasting overall but it
just wasn't coke it's a perfect example of how people like something that they’re familiar with rather
than something that's new and better and I’m sure all of you can relate to this I’m sure there's a movie
out there that you love just because you watched it as acid you would prefer it over a new better movie
how about the car you drive I’ll bet some of you drive an old beat-up car but wouldn't trade it in fora
brand new one we all love things that we’re familiar with many of you would rather drink a coke right
now over a new probably superior drink simply because you’re familiar with coke and have grown to
love it so when they took coke from the public it was like someone took away that old beat-up car
you've grown to love people were furious and I can’t blame them I'm not saying coke is an old beat-up
car I'm saying it doesn't matterit doesn't matter how good or bad theold product was the point is that's
theproduct they wanted they changed my cokeI know they could change it the entireincident made coke
realize how important their product was to some people and it made the people realize it as well I
suppose you don't realize what you have till it's gone and when it was gone people realized what they
had it made the public better appreciate the original coke in total there were about three months in
1985 where it was impossible to get regular coke in North America after that they realized their error
and reintroduced it and as you would expect it returned to high sales some believe this was all
intentional Coca-Cola took away their soda to make people realize how much they wanted it I thought is
that this is so risky that a company would have to be crazy to attempt something like this and I don’t
recommend anyone out there attempt it it only worked out for Coke because of their ninety nine year
history and connection to the customer any company that doesn't have that would almost certainly tank
in the same circumstances but back to where we started this older can has the word classic on it
because they needed people to know that this was the classic coke not new coke when they
reintroduced it they called it Coca Cola classic and it maintained that name forever 20 years 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 today the new coke incident is mostly forgotten and nobody’s
mistaking this product for new coke but at the time it was one of the biggest stories in the country
something think that's funny is when Coke announced that they were bringing back the classic recipe
ABC interrupted their program and covered it as breaking news new coke was still sold as coke renamed
coke to after a few years and was eventually discontinued altogether what happened to new coke
doesn't even matter the focus here is the absence of the old coke new coke was just a victim in all this it
got a bad name and the whole situation was thought to be a crazy decision from Coca-Cola but in the
end it all worked out and the company came out of this better than ever before this whole story is very
unique and has an ending that few could have expected it shows that Coca-Cola and any company that
relies on the nostalgia of their customers can't make any changes people are buying the product
because it is what it is whether it’s good or bad people want it for what it is let me know in the
comments what you think of all this was replacing the original coke of crazy decision or would you have
done the same it's an easy decision looking back at it today buttery to put yourself in their position and
let me know what products you would hate if they made any changes I'd like to hear what you have to
say thank you for watching