New Coke Gets a Reboot Thanks to ‘Stranger Things’
New Coke, even over three decades later, remains one of the biggest fails in business/marketing history, but with the third season of Stranger Things dropping this summer, the infamous soft drink is making a limited appearance on store shelves.
With the third season of the popular Netflix series taking place in the summer of 1985, when New Coke debuted and lasted only 79 days before being pulled, the streaming giant and the soda giant have teamed up for a special promotion that will see limted-edition Stranger Things packages of New Coke available and special “upside-down” vending machines in select cities that will dispense New Coke beginning May 23 in New York City.
https://twitter.com/CocaCola/status/1130820764813471744
The partnership project was very hush-hush even within Coca-Cola and was dubbed “Project Revival.” According to Coca-Cola’s Global Category Development Principal Scientist Michael Burdett, “We had to first retrieve the New Coke recipe that has been protected in our safe over the years. All told, everything took about six months and was top secret. Most people on my team didn’t even know about it.”
Burdett continued, “One of our growth behaviors is celebrating and learning from failure, and New Coke – for better or worse – is known as a failure. Bringing it back in a fun, creative way to support the ‘Stranger Things’ partnership shows we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Erica Banas is rock/classic rock news blogger that loves the smell of old vinyl in the morning.
