To this day Sergio Zyman (who was the brand manager of Coke at the time in charge of launching Coke 2.0), New Coke was a "success" in that it got people talking about the product at a level unprecedented in the company's history. The interest that it generated led to a sizeable uptick in sales once Coke Classic was brought back.
Of course, you can also take these as the words of a guy justifying his handling of the worst product reboot in history.