OK Soda
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OK Soda was a soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1994 that aggressively courted the Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics, including endorsements and even outright negative publicity. It did not sell well in select test markets and was officially declared out of production in 1995 before reaching nation-wide distribution. The drink's slogan was "Things are going to be OK."
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[edit] History
In 1993, Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta rehired Sergio Zyman to be the chief of marketing for all Coca-Cola beverage brands, a surprising choice given that Zyman had worked closely with the New Coke campaign, possibly the largest advertising failure in Coke's history. However, after revamping the can design and print advertising campaigns for Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Classic with great success, Zyman was given free rein to design new products with aggressive, offbeat marketing campaigns.
International market research done by The Coca-Cola Company in the late 1980s revealed that "Coke" was the second most recognizable word across all languages in the world. The first word was "OK." Zyman (who also conceived Fruitopia) decided to take advantage of this existing brand potential and created a soft drink with this name. He conceived of a counter-intuitive advertising campaign that intentionally targeted people who didn't like advertising. He predicted that the soft drink would be a huge success, and promised Goizueta that the soft drink would take at least 4% of the US beverage market.
[edit] Testing
Despite a nationwide advertising campaign and intense media attention, OK Soda was marketed only in select areas, representing different demographic areas during the summer of 1994. This is a common form of marketing research known as "test marketing", in which a product is launched on a small scale to determine the likely acceptance of the product when it is introduced to the wider market. There was one unusual aspect of the test marketing, and that was that four separate can designs were used (with each test market getting all four designs). Coke announced at the time that they would continually update the cans with new designs (later designs can be identified by having the explanatory tag "A UNIQUE FRUITY SODA" on them). Some of the testing locations were:
- Austin, Texas
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Denver, Colorado
- Knoxville, Tennessee
- Portland, Oregon
- Providence, Rhode Island
- Little Rock, Arkansas
- Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
- Omaha, Nebraska
- Fargo, North Dakota
- Sacramento, California
- Seattle, Washington
- Detroit, Michigan
- Atlantic Canada
- Northern Wisconsin
OK Soda never captured more than 3% of the beverage market in any of the target locations, failing to match Zyman's hype. The project was cancelled by Coca-Cola just seven months after its kickoff, and the soft drink was never widely released to the public.
[edit] Cult following
After its failure, OK Soda enjoyed a brief cult following on the internet, including the use of a newsgroup at alt.fan.ok-soda, which was fairly active for several years. Fans would reminisce about the offbeat advertising materials, sell merchandise and intact cans, and trade recipes for home-brewed OK Soda facsimiles. Even then, the newsgroup was soon taken over by fans of the Generation X band Throwing Muses, and discussion of the original subject died out. It is still referenced in hipster crowds as an example of large corporations attempting to connect with youth markets and failing; online editorial magazines such as The Baffler and suck.com would reference the drink and marketing campaign well after its demise. The merchandise, cans and advertising material can still be found readily on eBay.
Minneapolis punk band Dillinger Four performed a song called Smells like OK Soda, criticizing the marketing techniques of large corporations in courting the "counterculture" demographic.
Although it's not clear if it's by design or by coincidence, an OK Soda machine appears in the Blaine High School gym / auditorium in the movie Waiting for Guffman.
[edit] Marketing
OK Soda has been remembered more for its unique advertising campaign than for its fruity flavor. The name and advertising campaign attempted to poke fun at the "I'm OK, You're OK" pop-psychology of the early-70s. OK Soda was intentionally marketed at the difficult Generation X and Generation Y markets, and attempted to cash in on the group's existing disillusionment and disaffection with standard advertising campaigns; the concept was that the youth market was already aware that they were being manipulated by mass-media marketing, so this advertising campaign would just be more transparent about it. Its indirect advertising was a form of rebel advertising similar to the McDonalds commercials for the Arch Deluxe. The campaign was designed by Portland based advertising powerhouse Wieden & Kennedy. Spokespeople for the company and their advertisers were very frank about the fact that they were marketing the drink entirely on the "feeling" rather than the taste.
The general public did not respond to the offbeat campaign, and most critics point out that the campaigning was too overt in its courting of the youth and teen market. Most teenagers surveyed found the campaign "confusing".[citation needed]
[edit] 800 number and TV ads
In addition to regular video and print advertisements, OK Soda had several 800 numbers (1–800–I–FEEL–OK and 1–800–4–OK–SODA) that you could call and leave messages with the disclaimer "your comments may be used in advertising or exploited in some other way we haven't figured out yet". They also had TV advertisements with messages ostensibly left on this answering machine, with mildly enthusiastic responses, off-topic messages and even angry tirades against the advertising campaign. One of the more famous television ads featured the message: "Ah, this is Pam H. from Newton, Massachusetts, and I resent you saying that everything is going to be O.K. You don't know anything about my life. You don't know what I've been through in the last month. I really resent it. I'm tired of you people trying to tell me things that you don't have any idea about. I resent it. ((Click!))". The hotline received millions of calls from curious teenagers, but ultimately did little to actually promote the sale of the soft drink. The voice over actor from the television and radio ads was also the automated voice on the hotline. One of the options from the automated phone menu was to hear "Amazingly Lifelike OK Bird Whistles". If you selected this option you would hear the actor twirp, chirp, warble and otherwise imitate birds in his chipper yet deadpan, smarmy voice.
[edit] Can design
Both the cans and the print advertisements for the soft drink featured work by popular Fantagraphics cartoonists Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns, known for their low-key and blandly realistic style. Unlike the brightly colored Coca-Cola cans, they were decorated in drab shades of grey, with occasions of red text. In addition to the primarily two-tone illustrations, the cans would feature a special code that could be entered at the given 800 number as well as a "Coincidence", which was usually some odd bit of trivia about some town in the United States. They would also sometimes contain messages from the OK Manifesto, which was a series of platitudes about OK-Ness, pithy thought reform sayings with no real meaning, much in the style of doublespeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four, mocking traditional advertisement slogans or catch-phrases. Some cans had similar messages printed on their inside.
[edit] Manifesto
Excerpts from the OK Soda manifesto were printed on the cans, and were also available for a short while on their website. Some of the sayings were:
- What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?
- OK Soda emphatically rejects anything that is not OK, and fully supports anything that is.
- The better you understand something, the more OK it turns out to be.
- OK Soda says, "Don't be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything."
- OK Soda reveals the surprising truth about people and situations.
- OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.
- There is no real secret to feeling OK.
- OK Soda may be the preferred drink of other people such as yourself.
- Never overestimate the remarkable abilities of "OK" brand soda.
- Please wake up every morning knowing that things are going to be OK.
[edit] Backlash
Many artists were particularly irritated by the hypocrisy of anti-corporate sentiment in advertisements for a product distributed by The Coca-Cola Company. They felt that the existing post-grunge art movement was being exploited for corporate gain. Obey Giant creator Shepard Fairey noted that the color scheme and font were strikingly similar to his signature "Obey" stickers which were catching on at the time and made it his personal mission to sabotage the advertising campaign in Providence, Rhode Island. He made several custom-sized posters that said "AG" (an abbreviation for André the Giant) instead of "OK", and plastered them over all of the ads he could find. (As a side note, some consider this an ironic move on Fairey's part considering the similarities between Fairey's work and that of feminist artist Barbara Kruger, and the financial success of the Obey Giant clothing line as well as his work for other soda companies, such as Dr Pepper/Seven Up's Sunkist brand as well as Sprite, Mountain Dew, Express Jeans, and Levi's.)[citation needed]
[edit] Composition and taste
OK Soda had a more "citric" taste than traditional colas, almost like a Fruit Punch version of Coke's Fresca. Some reviewers described it as "slightly spicy". Others likened it to a combination of orange soft drink and flat Coca-Cola. Some compared it to a "suicide" or "graveyard", a mixture of all the flavors available at a convenience store or gas station's soft drink dispenser. For many, OK Soda was never something to drink straight; it was preferred by many as a mixer with alcoholic beverages.
In contrast to earlier beverages from the 1980s also noted for their marketing campaigns, such as Jolt and Red Bull, OK Soda's caffeine content was not emphasized. A 12-ounce serving of OK Soda had only 40.5 milligrams of caffeine, slightly less than Coca-Cola itself (45.6 mg).
A popular playground urban legend of the time was that OK Soda was a mixture of the ends of soda left over at the Coca-Coca plant.
Many OK Soda fans have attempted to recreate the taste of OK Soda from memory. Though the actual formula is unknown, a generally accepted recipe for the approximate taste is:
- ¼ orange soft drink
- ¾ semi-flat Coca-Cola
- a splash of Dr Pepper
- Sprite can also be used instead of Dr Pepper
[edit] References
- Greising, David (1998). I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke: The Life and Leadership of Roberto Goizueta. The Big Brand Machine, pp. 233-235. New York: Wiley. ISBN 0-471-34594-6.
- Pendegrast, Mark (2000). For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It. Global Fizz, pp. 400-403. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-05468-4.
- Zyman, Sergio (2000). The End of Marketing as We Know It. Marketing is Science, pp. 47-49. New York: HarperBusiness. ISBN 0-88730-983-6.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- "Will the Teens Buy It? Coke's new OK soda uses irony and understatment to woo a skeptical market" — A critical business perspective from Time Magazine on OK Soda as a case study for marketing to Generation X (May 30, 1994)
- "Coke Hopes to Sell New Drink on How it Feels not Tastes" — Transcript of an NPR interview with a soft drink marketing consultant on OK Soda (May 27, 1994) (from web archives)
- OK Marketing — A retrospective of the OK marketing campaign by suck.com (February 14, 1996)
- OK Soda at the Open Directory Project (suggest site)
- The OK Soda Page — an unofficial site with comprehensive information (from web archives)
- Project X - An interview with Obey Giant creator Shepard Fairey, who documents his personal sabotage of the OK Soda campaign in Providence. (from web archives)
- The OK-NESS Experience — another unofficial site with sound files from the 800 number.
- Austin TX 10th Anniversary OK Soda Page observations from a test market.
