Coca-Zero Was Bullshit From the Start
Starting next month, Coke Zero will disappear , replaced by a nearly identical beverage with nearly identical packaging and 100% identical ingredient lists. His replacement, Coke Zero Sugar, would be bullshit, but Coke Zero was bullshit too.
I’m not saying Coke Zero is bad . I drink the bottle as I write this. But he has no reason to exist.
Coca-Cola originally created Coke Zero only because Diet Coke was too girly. Here’s how the Baltimore Sun reported the launch of Coke Zero in 2005 :
However, Coca-Cola Zero tries not to label the diet. Its marketing targets a specific demographic, such as the youth and the most courageous men, who see the stigma in the word diet.
“We tried not to call it a diet,” said Scott Williamson, a Coca-Cola spokesman. “There is a group of people, primarily young people, who for a variety of reasons, due to some taste or brand personality, will not drink diet sodas. They may not like them because of the taste or stigma attributed to the word diet. “
This is completely a marketing gimmick. Diet Coke was actually born out of the same market forces because Tab (Coke-flavored diet drink) had too much of the “woman on a diet” stigma .
Every time you rebrand a drink, you have the opportunity to change the flavor, which is why Diet Coke is marginally better than Tab. Coke Zero and Diet Coke are slightly different, with the latter using aspartame and the former using a mixture of aspartame and acesulfame potassium. (These are both zero-calorie sweeteners, and, before you ask, neither will kill you.)
Some people say they prefer Coke Zero to Diet Coke, but be honest: after a second sip, all you think is “mmm black soda.” The composition of Coke Zero Sugar has supposedly been changed, but the ingredient list is identical to Coke Zero. Most likely, the “natural tastes” component was tweaked, and that’s it. So the death of Coke Zero and the launch of a brand new Coke Zero Sugar is marketing bullshit. But in the field of diet drink marketing, this is nothing new.