New Coke
New Coke: The Most Memorable Marketing Blunder Ever?
The History of New Coke
To hear some tell it, April 23, 1985, was a day that will live in marketing infamy.
On that day, The Coca‑Cola Company took arguably the biggest risk in consumer goods history, announcing that it was changing the formula for the world's most popular soft drink, and spawning consumer angst the likes of which no business has ever seen.
The Coca‑Cola Company took arguably the biggest risk in consumer goods history, announcing that it was changing the formula for the world's most popular soft drink, and spawning consumer angst the likes of which no business has ever seen.
Swinging for the Fences
The Coca‑Cola Company introduced reformulated Coca‑Cola, often referred to as "new Coke," marking the first formula change in 99 years. The company didn't set out to create the firestorm of consumer protest that ensued; instead, The Coca‑Cola Company intended to re-energize its Coca‑Cola brand and the cola category in its largest market, the United States.
That firestorm ended with the return of the original formula, now called Coca‑Cola classic, a few months later. The return of original formula Coca‑Cola on July 11, 1985, put the cap on 79 days that revolutionized the soft-drink industry, transformed The Coca‑Cola Company and stands today as testimony to the power of taking intelligent risks, even when they don't quite work as intended.
Old Coke taken away.
Firestorm. We want Old Coke, says Hammers in the Warehouse.
Old Coke given back.
Robert Malone
Late 2021, Bob Malone gets tossed from Twitter. YouTube Rogan episode gets pulled. (Psy Op Hair-Pulling Fight with The Joker Alex Berenson on Fox News ensues.)
Firestorm. We want the Real Shit. We want Bob!
Narrator: Bob had been and would be provided on every venue everywhere except the Tier One. You couldn’t turn around in the kitchen without bumping into Robert Malone.
Old Coke, errr…platform given back. Bob was always supposed to be The Guy.
![Twitter avatar for @RobertKennedyJr](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/RobertKennedyJr.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFo87xJvWYB8VN0o.jpg)
A triumphant cage fight with the Pfizer “exec”/ Boston Consulting Group contractor…and then O’Keefe is “planning strategy”…with Bob Malone! 😅
1.1 M followers on “X”.
Ivermectin
Ivermectin Good!
Sustainability
35 Years: The Mectizan® Donation Program
The Mectizan Donation Program is the longest-running, disease-specific drug donation program of its kind
For centuries, river blindness — also known as onchocerciasis — plagued remote communities in Africa, Latin America and Yemen, and there was no answer to this affliction.
This all began to change in the mid-to-late 1970s when Dr. William Campbell of Merck Research Laboratories suggested the use of ivermectin (later named Mectizan) for river blindness in humans. Following the breakthrough lab work by Dr. Campbell, another Merck researcher, Dr. Mohammed Aziz, championed the clinical development of Mectizan. Dr. Aziz led the collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early 1980s to design and implement field studies in West Africa that, ultimately, proved the effectiveness of the drug against river blindness.
In 1987, Merck committed to donate Mectizan – as much as needed, for as long as needed – with the goal to help eliminate river blindness.
A ground-breaking public-private partnership
In order to reach this goal, Merck leaders recognized that many organizations with unique skills would need to work together as a team. To enable this collaboration, Merck established the Mectizan Donation Program (MDP), a ground-breaking public-private partnership. Operating from the Atlanta-based *Task Force for Global Health, the MDP coordinates technical and operational activities between Merck, WHO, endemic countries, and a range of public and private stakeholders.
The Task Force For Global Health
Building on the successful implementation of the river blindness program, in 1998 Merck expanded its commitment to include donating Mectizan for another neglected tropical disease, lymphatic filariasis, also known as elephantiasis, in African countries and Yemen where it co-exists with river blindness. For lymphatic filariasis, Mectizan is administered with albendazole, a drug donated by GSK.
In November 2017, in support of new WHO guidelines, Merck announced an expansion of the program to reach up to an additional 100 million people per year through 2025 as part of the global effort to eliminate lymphatic filariasis.
More than thirty years later, the results of the MDP speak for themselves. Several countries in Africa are making significant progress towards eliminating both diseases. In Latin America, four countries – Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Guatemala – have received WHO verification of river blindness elimination. Lymphatic filariasis has now been eliminated in Togo, Yemen and Malawi. Both river blindness and lymphatic filariasis are on WHO’s list of neglected tropical diseases targeted for elimination globally.
Pioneering a community-directed approach
Today, the MDP is the longest-running, disease-specific drug donation program of its kind and has been influential in the development of a number of other drug donation programs. And, the MDP’s community-directed strategy used to distribute Mectizan has enabled add-on health services to be introduced in remote communities where health services are limited. The program reaches more than 300 million people in the affected areas annually, with more than 4.4 billion treatments donated since 1987.
People in the communities are an integral part of the distribution process in 49 countries where Mectizan has been distributed.
According to Uche Amazigo, former director of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control, “by engaging the people, the treatment coverage increased significantly.”
Ivermectin Bad. NO IVM for YOU. For Novel Super-Antigen.
Firestorm. We want our Mectin. Mectin is evvvveeerrrryyywhhhere.
BUT IVM GOOD!
::Warehouse of Hammers cheers wildly.::
(Hopefully you are beginning to understand the role of Joe Rogan in the Psy Op that will not die.)
Mectin Good. (Old Coke is back. Bob is back on Twitter. Cuomo loves the Merck Sauce.)
These guys know what they are doing.
They know how to make you want something with the double fake out.
The End
I'm old enough to remember the New Coke/Classic Coke engineered ploy. Basically, they swapped out cane sugar for high fructose corn syrup which would immediately have been obvious, so they labeled the new "pepsi" formula "New Coke" and told us all that their marketing research had shown that "Coke vs. Pepsi" -- pepsi won, this is what consumers prefer, so now we have Pepsi vs. crappy New Coke (for those of us who really liked the old Coke).
They waited a sufficient amount of time, manufactured some clamoring, thinking people now will not remember the actual taste of cane sugar in coke, and reintroduced "our bad" -- Classic Coke.
And phased out New Coke.
Well. Some of us DO remember what cane sugar sodas used to taste like. This was the 80s. So sometime maybe in the 2000's you could start to get some boutique cane sugar sodas (these taste good, don't they?) and anyone who has ever had a "Mexican coke" knows that is the taste of old coca-cola that I grew up with.
Interesting that the obesity epidemic took off when HFCS was introduced into the food supply.
Haha I thought meth is the new coke. Good morning Sage , another good one.