Allen, Craig M.News Is People: The Rise of Local TV
News and the Fall of News from New York. Ames: Iowa
State Press, 2001. Allen takes a scholarly approach
to help his readers understand why local televi-
sion news has become more critical than national
and world news to the general public.
Brokaw, Tom.A Long Way from Home: Growing Up
in the American Heartland. New York: Random
House, 2002. Brokaw’s memoir of his youth in
South Dakota and the values that shaped him.
Darnton, Kate, Kayce Freed Jennings, and Lynn
Sherr, eds.Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life. New
York: PublicAffairs, 2007. The first significant work
about Jennings following his death in 2005.
Rather, Dan, and Peter Wyden.I Remember. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1991. Offers interesting insights by
Rather into his youth and early years in Texas.
Anthony Moretti
See also Brokaw, Tom; Cable television; Jennings,
Peter; Journalism; Rather, Dan; Television.
New Coke
Definition Coca-Cola’s new soft-drink formula
Date Introduced on April 23, 1985
Coca-Cola underestimated Americans’ sentimental attach-
ment to its soft drink and caused a public outcr y by replac-
ing its ninety-nine-year-old cola formula. The new product
and its failure acquired iconic value, coming to symbolize
all the decade’s major mistakes by corporate executives.
In the early 1980’s, the Coca-Cola Company began
experimenting with different sweeteners to produce
a new, diet version of Coke. This research continued
in 1983, as Coca-Cola sought to develop a sweeter
cola to rival Pepsi and increase its market share
among teenagers. In January, 1985, operating under
extreme security, marketing executives began to de-
velop an advertising campaign for the new, sweeter
cola. Hastily, two research companies conducted
market research regarding the new formula. Prelim-
inary blind taste tests indicated that Americans pre-
ferred the new, sweeter cola. However, only 20 per-
cent of the taste tests conducted used the final
formula. Nonetheless, these results guided Coca-
Cola management’s decision to market the new for-
mula.
The company also underestimated research that
indicated Americans held a sentimental and patri-
otic attachment to the Coca-Cola formula, instead
believing that consumers would remain loyal to the
brand name despite a change in the formula. Coca-
Cola’s management thus determined that only one
soft drink would be named Coca-Cola in the United
States, to ensure that any increase in consumers of
potential Coke products would be attributable to
converted Pepsi drinkers, rather than loyal Coca-
Cola drinkers. The new formula became the only
Coca-Cola, and the company no longer bottled the
original formula, used in the United States for the
previous ninety-nine years.
On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola president Roberto
Goizueta and other top executives held a press con-
ference at the Lincoln Center in New York to intro-
duce the new Coke. Surprised by the overwhelm-
ingly negative response and hostility from reporters,
Goizueta was ill-prepared to field questions from
journalists in a professional manner. Reports of Coca-
Cola’s new Coke and Goizueta’s loss of composure
led news broadcasts around the country. Released to
the public the next day, the new Coke was rejected by
nostalgic Americans, who felt betrayed by the corpo-
ration’s decision to change the formula during a de-
cade whose culture was centrally characterized by
nostalgia. By June, the Coca-Cola customer service
telephone number was receiving over eight thou-
sand calls a day from angry consumers. Forced by
customers to admit its mistake, on July 10, 1985,
Coca-Cola reintroduced the original formula under
the name Coca-Cola Classic. The new, sweeter for-
mula remained on shelves as Coke II. The decision
to sell both formulas led many analysts to speculate
that Coca-Cola had planned the introduction of new
Coke and the subsequent media and consumer out-
cry in order to garner free publicity. The company,
however, disputed these charges, claiming they were
neither “dumb enough” nor “smart enough” to plan
such an advertising ploy.Impact The Coca-Cola Company miscalculated the
emotional connection Americans had with its signa-
ture soft drink. Without conclusive market research,
the hastily made decision to introduce a new for-
mula created a hostile consumer backlash, forcing
Coca-Cola to relent and to rebottle Coca-Cola Clas-
sic. The new Coke fiasco is now used in many adver-
tising textbooks as an example of a failed marketing
strategy.704 New Coke The Eighties in America