New Coke - New Coke After Coke Classic

New Coke After Coke Classic

In the short run, the reintroduction of old Coke saved Coke's sales numbers and brought it back in the good graces of many customers and bottlers. Phone calls and letters to the company were as joyful and thankful as they had been angry and depressed ("You would have thought we'd cured cancer", said one executive.).

But confusion reigned at the company's marketing department, which had to come up with a plan to market two Cokes where such plans had been completely off the table mere months before. Classic Coke did not need much help, with a "Red, White and You" campaign showcasing the American virtues many of those who had clamored for its reintroduction had pointedly reminded the company it embodied. But the company was at a loss to sell what was now just Coke. "The Best Just Got Better" could no longer be used. Marketers fumbled for a strategy for the rest of the year. Matters were not helped when McDonald's announced shortly after the reintroduction that it was switching over to Classic Coke at every store across the country.

At the beginning of 1986, however, Coke's marketing team found a strategy by returning to their original motives for changing the drink: the youth market so beholden to Pepsi. Max Headroom, the purportedly computer-generated media personality played by Matt Frewer, was chosen to replace Cosby as the spokesman (of sorts) for Coke's new "Catch the Wave" campaign. A very stylish figure in his jacket and sunglasses, he was already known to much of the U.S. youth audience through appearances on MTV, where he had first appeared in the Art of Noise's "Paranoimia" video, and Cinemax. The campaign was launched with a memorable television commercial, produced by McCann-Erickson New York, with Max saying in his trademark stutter, "C-c-c-catch the wave!" and referring to his fellow "Cokeologists". In a riposte to Pepsi's televisual teasings, one showed Headroom asking a Pepsi can he was "interviewing" how it felt about more drinkers preferring the new Coke to it and then cut to the condensation forming on the can. "S-s-s-s-sweating?" he asked.

It was a huge success, and surveys likewise showed that more than three-quarters of the target market were aware of the ads within two days. Coke's corporate hotline received more calls about Max than any previous spokesperson, some even asking if he had a girlfriend. The ads and campaign continued throughout the year and were chosen as best of 1986 by Video Storyboard of New York.