Coca Cola is going to introduce an alcoholic beverage, initially in Japan, similar to Japanese alcoholic beverage Chu-Hi. The company, which has a history of failed brands and marketing misadventures, is limiting the product to the Japanese market in a bid to contain any fallout from a possible failure.If Coke's first alcoholic beverage in its 132 year existence falls flat, it will join the company's pantheon of failed products and marketing blunders.
Folklore has it that if there were Oscars for the biggest and most spectacular corporate, marketing and branding blunder, the New Coke would win hands-down. Unnerved by the success of its arch-rival Pepsi, Coke went in for a formulation change and introduced New Coke - and April 23, 1985 is a date that will forever live in corporate infamy.Suffice to say that such was the consumer backlash against the product that Coke put itself out of its misery in 79 days, when it brought back the old formulation on July 11, 1985.
If one thought that Roberto Goizueta, Chairman, Coca Cola and his marketing head, Sergio Zyman - the duo who conceived of New Coke - would have learnt their lesson, well, once was simply not enough for them.The duo conceived of the strangest soda ever to pop-up in grocery stores, called OK Soda, with weird looking faces on the cans and negative publicity. Launched in 1993, it went bust within seven months and by 1995 was completely stopped.
Coca Cola BlaK, the company's first coffee-flavoured drink, was launched in 2006 in France, from where the contagion spread to the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovenia, US and Canada. Eventually, the fizzy coffee flavoured beverage, that was neither coffee nor soda, fizzled out in 2008.
Another drink that was introduced to take on rival Pepsi, which had a clear fizzy drink, Crystal Pepsi, Coke's Tab Clear was launched in December 1992. By 1994 however, despite some reports of initial success, the drink was discontinued - with some believing that it was solely introduced to kill Crystal Pepsi, an objective that was apparently achieved.
A citrus soda and hybrid energy drink, Vault was launched in June 2005 and was targeted at teenage boys and young men. It even had variants in different fruity flavours, like Grape Vault and Peach Vault. It was discontinued in 2011 in favour of a reinvigorated Mello Yello, a citrus carbonated drink.