I like to teach the world to sing...

I have always like Coca Cola, not only the drink but stuff like collectibles. I like its classic design and to me it represents a global symbol. I used to collect bottled and can Coca Cola from different countries. I had stopped for quite awhile because mum was piss off when those cans of Coca Cola started bursting and create a mess. It is like one can out of no reason burst, you cleaned it up and the following month another can burst again. I manage to preserve my current collection but i am not going to try my luck by getting more of the cola.

Anyway i was watching this interesting documentary on the history of Coca Cola on the history channel. I always thought that coke was the dominating leader in the soft drink market since donkey years back (in the 1880s era). The truth is Pepsi had once overtook the market leader position!

Coca cola has stick to the older generation while Pepsi quickly engage the younger generation with messages like "Choice of the new generation", etc.

Of course, coca cola bei tahan so they strike back with a popular advertisement (more on this later) but that was not enough. Pepsi continue its lead with campaign like the Pepsi Challenge in 1980.

So the CEO of Coke think of a smart idea. They did market research, change the formula of coke and launch a product called new coke and it taste much like Pepsi and that ended up to be the biggest marketing flop ever made. Pepsi has a field day. It is a victory for them. They declare a one day holiday and even started with ads which a first-time Pepsi drinker exclaimed "Now I know why Coke did it!"

The traditional folks were unhappy that changes were made to the traditional formula. There were riots, calls and even lawsuits to get the organisation to switch back to the original formula. Of course the sales were low and the CEO lan lan change back to the original formula and named it classic coke and thats hows the tagline "Its the real thing" comes about. This spur sales and kinda of turnaround the situation for coca cola! There has been various conspircy theory to suggest that coke purposely plan this marketing ploy.

Of course things are more complicated now as the 2 companies has grown big through acquisition and opening up of new markets. It is hard to measure who is the leader.



Anyone remembered this advertisement? It was supposed to start in 1971, i was not even born yet! Somehow i have a deep impression on this advertisement.

There you go, hope you folks enjoy this short history on coke.

Pitstop Cafe, we serve coke

Astroboy