Millennials probably don’t know of Coca-Cola’s other apostasy, that in the 1980s it abandoned its traditional formula in favor of one the company hoped would compete better with Pepsi for “modern” taste buds. It was dubbed New Coke. Thanks to public backlash, within three months the company brought back the original formula, rebranded as Classic Coca-Cola.
Eventually New Coke went the way of the Edsel.
Many have speculated that it was all a marketing ploy to bring attention to a waning brand. Most likely it was an idea spawned by a new species of corporate animal at the time, the MBA. To shirtsleeves business people, MBAs were an annoying class of resume-padders who got a masters degree in business with little or no actual experience. Colleges around the country were pushing the degree as a new revenue stream. Corporatist public companies were snapping them up with outrageous opening salaries. Many dumb ideas still floating around free enterprise came from these degreed know-nothings. Still when someone who’s come up through the ranks finds a new MBA in their department, maybe even in charge, stomach cramps ensue. New Coke may very well have been spawned by just such a “little knowledge is a dangerous thing” hire down in Atlanta.
Perhaps most likely is that Coca-Cola saw the whole New Coke episode as a means of diverting attention from the fact that they were replacing sugar with high fructose corn syrup as the sweetner in the formula. Experienced Coke drinkers know that there was a certain something lost when this happened, even in Coke Classic.
Whatever the truth is, New Coke was a bust and proved that even the biggest, wealthiest, most powerful companies in the world can lose their way. But Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and Major League Baseball, among others, have done the New Coke fiasco one better by showing their collective keesters over the new Georgia election law. No matter how you package stupidity – i.e., calling voter I.D. requirements voter suppression, or Jim Crow, or Jim Eagle per ol’ Uncle Joe – it is still stupidity.
No one is hurt by Georgia’s new law, but the corporatists, Hollywood airheads, and left wing radicals who oppose it are doing direct damage to the greatest black-majority city in the country by championing MLB’s move of the All Star game from Atlanta. They are endorsing corrupt elections. And they are hurting thousands of small businesses and workers of every stripe with their virtue-signaling, spineless, dimwitted vapidity.
Is that redundant? Perhaps. Just like New Coke and other brands we can do without.
For a two-page PDF statement of where Way Out Charlotte Pike is coming from, please CLICK HERE.
