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The New Coke is often derided as a massive screw up, in fact, it was an incredible and resounding success.

At the time Coke was a stagnant product, the Pepsi Challenge was stomping it hard in TV ads and was the hip up and comer against Coke which was viewed as an ancient brand with no real loyalty.

The second they announced it the backlash was huge. The nightly newscasts picked it up, it was the front page of every newspaper in the country, feature stories in every magazine known to man. All in support of a product that was seemingly off the radar in most people’s mind.

The quick backtrack on the concept made people think about Coke and not take it for granted. Shortly after that Coke Classic stomped Pepsis growth trend cold like a German winter offensive in Russia.

Now when you look at where the two companies are its pointless to argue. Coke won and won big, or is winning big.

The New Coke in a military sense was a military feint followed by a knockout blow from the opposite flank.

Your comments on New Coke were dead on. I was working for a market research company that ran their consumer surveys through the whole thing start to finish. I will always maintain that it was a brilliant coup against pepsi. When all was said and done, by the end of it all when they introduced "Coca-cola Classic", they'd managed to gain 6% market share overall. The soft drink market is HUGH! 6% is a lot of money.

I remember laughing at some of the responses we were getting in our surveys towards the latter part of the campaign. The first part was always questions about what you've purchased in the past week or so. You'd yet these responses, "coke, coke, coke", then you'd ask how they liked New Coke and they'd almost universally pan it. (There were at least 6 different formulations of NC out there that I could identify based on responses). However, the important part was that they were still buying coke anyway. This was after you knew there was no longer any original coke to be had nationwide.

Like I said, I think the whole thing was brilliant, and was a really interesting study on brand identification and loyalty. I wish I could get access to the original data we gathered. It would make for a really interesting paper.

The New Coke in a military sense was a military feint followed by a knockout blow from the opposite flank.

Then it was the most expensive feint in history.

Not to many people realize this, but New Coke, was one of the most expensive and highly researched products in history. It cost a massive massive fortune, just to research and develop before even one single penny was spent on marketing.

They did numerous blind taste tests across the country, spending enormous and vast sums on this. The R and D spent on New Coke (not including marketing) makes it one of the most expensive beverage or food related projects in history.

Several executives lost their jobs in the aftermath, but the return to old classic, while being a massive success, was excessively costly.