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New Coke, McDonalds Pizza & President Trump.
Every brand stumbles at some point.
We may never know the name, but you can bet someone gave a pretty convincing presentation to then Coca-Cola CEO Robert Goizueta in the mid 1980s. The CEO was convinced that based on more than 200,000 taste tests customers preferred the sweeter version New Coke, over the original. Armed with research, Goizueta gave the go-ahead. On April 23, 1985, a date Coke fans refer to as “Black Tuesday” New Coke hit the shelves. Three months later the company announced they would bring back the old formula, packaging it as Coca-Cola Classic.
The research was correct, but flawed. It was true, in more than 200,000 taste tests individuals preferred the sweeter taste of New Coke. What researchers didn’t take into account was the volume of the sample versus drinking an entire can or large bottle. In small amounts New Coke was preferred. But to drink an entire can or large bottle, it was just too sweet.
McDonald’s too has had many products which sounded better than they tasted. Why decision makers ever believed Pizza would work still remains a mystery. McDonald’s is the grandfather of the fast-food industry. They pioneered it. Approving a product that would take 11 minutes to cook seems to go against everything McDonald’s was built around. By pizza standards, 11 minutes is damn fast, almost twice as…