12

It is claimed that New Coke was a conspiracy to boost sales of Classic Coke.

The company intentionally changed the formula, hoping consumers would be upset with the company, and demand the original formula to return, which in turn would cause sales to spike.

Is there any evidence for this?

Sklivvz
  • 78,578
  • 29
  • 321
  • 428
Thomas O
  • 11,908
  • 7
  • 53
  • 72
  • Can you provide a link to the claim? How would this "conspiracy" work? – Sklivvz May 06 '11 at 07:35
  • @Sklivvz, Here is a list of [conspiracy theories about new coke on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke#Conspiracy_theories). The main reason it is claimed that it is true was because classic coke had a massive increase in sales after new coke was phased out, and Pepsi basically made no gains. – Thomas O May 06 '11 at 07:42
  • They needed time to remove the Coca from the cola. – Rusty May 06 '11 at 09:04
  • 2
    @Thomas O:Conspiracy implies there was a crime(or intention of a crime). This would be a marketing startegy. – apoorv020 May 06 '11 at 10:45
  • 1
    @apoorv020, good point, but it's still a "conspiracy theory" because people are "conspiring" to hide truth. N.B. I don't actually accept this theory (I think it was just a marketing screw up which turned out good for Coke), but I was told it by a friend of mine... – Thomas O May 06 '11 at 12:39
  • 1
    @apoorv020: No, most conspiracy theories are not about crimes. A conspiracy in this sense is group of people who are surreptitiously trying to achieve a secret goal that is different or opposite from their publicly stated aims. – Lennart Regebro May 06 '11 at 14:29
  • I would almost consider new coke to be a crime. Although perhaps not as bad as Crystal Pepsi – Monkey Tuesday May 06 '11 at 18:16
  • Let's not argue about definitions :-) Wikipedia calls it a conspiracy theory so I think we can accept it here. – Sklivvz May 07 '11 at 10:01

1 Answers1

10

Snopes debunked it.

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp

In short: Sales of Coke was waning, and Pepsi was winning. So Coca Cola changed the recipe to be more like Pepsi and made a big campaign about the new recipe. This got people upset, as they felt it violated something that was an integral part of being American. People therefore demanded the old Coke back, which they got after a couple of months. The whole debacle made people who felt American switch from Pepsi to Coke, and boosted Coke sales.

The conspiracy is that all of this was intentional from Coca Colas side, which of course is completely ridiculous.

Additional reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010tbnd

Lennart Regebro
  • 8,919
  • 1
  • 47
  • 43