Pepsi Forced Coca-Cola To Make One Of The Biggest Marketing Mistakes in History (2024)

It’s my 8th birthday. The whole family is invited to celebrate — grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. The house is at full capacity during those special occasions. The adults would sit and chat at the dining table while us kids sat on the floor in a big circle. The feast was a treat in itself. Pizza Hut and KFC. It was always the same every year but I loved it because we rarely got pizza or fried chicken. It’s one of the reasons why, after almost 30 years, I still love Pizza Hut and KFC. Whenever I order from either one of those places, it always brings me back to those birthday parties.

You can’t underestimate those happy moments. I don’t always remember what we did at those parties, but I always remember the food. Those memories and the nostalgia that floods over me every time I have Pizza Hut or KFC is exactly why New co*ke was a complete disaster for Coca-Cola.

What started off a “strong shot of alcohol mixed with cocaine and touted as a cure for most ailments” became one of the most iconic soft drinks in the world (minus the cocaine now). When you think of the classic soft drink, co*ke always comes to mind. Coca-Cola owned much of the market share in the cola market and still does to this day. But in the late 1970s, co*ke’s biggest competitor, Pepsi, was catching up.

Pepsi rolled out a legendary marketing campaign in 1975 that continued well into the ’80s — The Pepsi Challenge. People were asked to do a blind taste test in which they would taste test two cups of cola, one filled with co*ke and the other with Pepsi. A large percentage of the testers preferred Pepsi at first sip. When Coca-Cola did their own Pepsi Challenge, they were shocked to find similar results.

Coca-Cola wasn’t going to take this lying down. Convinced that people preferred the taste of Pepsi over co*ke, the company decided to reformulate co*ke.

In 1985, New co*ke was born…and died in a fiery crash that nobody could have ever predicted. They tested about 200,000 people in the US and Canadian market and most preferred the taste of New co*ke over Pepsi and even their…