Feeling threatened, Coca-Cola changed its 99-year-old top-secret formula and introduced New Coke, which was supposed to be sweeter than the old version.
Several Coke employees were terminated, and Coca-Cola changed the in-store promotional materials to emphasize the Icee name.
Pepsi's market share grew, prompting an anxious Coca-Cola to change its formula in 1985, only to quickly change it back in the face of a tide of customer wrath.
Unsurprisingly, Coca-Cola recently changed campaigns for Sprite, introducing a character with a hip-hop flavor named Miles Thirst that is meant to amplify the longtime Sprite theme, "Obey your thirst," with younger consumers.
Still, the restructuring announced last week by the Coca-Cola Company -- changes that include paring its work force by 6,000 and taking charges of $1.6 billion -- probably wasn't exactly what the local Chamber of Commerce had in mind.
The good news: Cap the Tap -- a program available through your Coca-Cola representative -- changes these dynamics by teaching crew members or wait staff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages.
It was withdrawn when consumers complained that Coca-Cola had also changed its secret formula.
Coca-Cola offered to change the way it sells beverages in Britain and four European countries to settle a five-year-old antitrust investigation.
"After 87 years of going at it eyeball to eyeball, the other guy just blinked," Mr. Enrico said in a full-page advertisement in American newspapers on the day that Coca-Cola announced the change.
[C4.] More Changes at Coca-Cola The management shuffle at Coca-Cola continued as Donald R. Knauss, the head of the North American retail division, was named president of the entire North American business.
