When Donald Keough was convinced of an idea, it carried weight. And not without good reason: the US businessman was one of the most influential figures in the US economy for decades. He was a member of the supervisory boards of investment bank Allen & Company, Berkshire Hathaway, fast food giant McDonald's and ketchup manufacturer Heinz. He was Chairman of the Columbia Pictures film studio for four years. However, Keough became best known as the spiritus rector of beverage giant Coca-Cola. For twelve years, he was COO, Director and Chairman of the Board of the company. And it was in this role that he appeared before the press in April 1985 to announce a groundbreaking decision: Just in time for the company's centenary, the recipe of the most important in-house product would be changed; Coke was yesterday, now there was New Coke. "I have never been so convinced of a decision," Keough explained to the public.

Only a short time later, he and his colleagues, such as Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta, must have wondered what they had gotten up to when launching New Coke. The public's opinion was unanimous: the new Coke is crap, we want the original back. The "Old Coke Drinkers of America" emerged, an interest group that demanded the old recipe back and even defamed the change as un-American.

Why did the Coca-Cola Company, an icon of the American consumer economy, get carried away with this expectedly controversial decision? Mainly because the company had been engaged in a bitter duel for dominance of the soft drinks market for several years. PepsiCo, the company that marketed Pepsi-Cola, had been gaining ground, taking a lot of market share from Coca-Cola with successful PR stunts and a tough pricing policy. The introduction of New Coke was just the climax of the bitterly fought "Cola Wars". This economic war did not stop at the drinks fridge; it encompassed civil rights conflicts, presidential elections and turned the question of which Coke one preferred into a political statement. For many years, the battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi was far too unequal to really be called a war.

The beginnings

Coca-Cola has always marketed its drink as "The Real Thing". Pharmacist John Pemberton invented the drink in 1886 in Columbus, Georgia, and six years later founded the Coca-Cola Company to start marketing it. A little further north in North Carolina, Caleb Bradham - also a pharmacist - had already developed his own lemonade, Brad's Drink, in 1892. Due to the success of Coca-Cola, he renamed his drink Pepsi Cola in 1902.

At the beginning, Pepsi was therefore primarily a copy that wanted to profit from the success of its big competitor from Georgia. A tactic that only worked to a limited extent. Until well into the 1930s, the relationship was clear and Coca-Cola dominated the market. After the Great Depression, Pepsi even had to file for bankruptcy twice, and the Cola Wars seemed to be over before they had even begun. But the new heads at Pepsi found a simple way to regain ground: be cheap. Pepsi attacked Coca-Cola with a price of 5 cents a bottle. Although this was enough to keep Coca-Cola from going bankrupt, it was still not really dangerous.

Politics brings the turnaround

It was only after the Second World War and with the increasing politicization of US society that the Cola Wars became a true duel. While Coca-Cola cultivated its image as a cozy, family-friendly, Uncle Sam-loyal brand, Pepsi jumped on many hot political topics. As early as 1947, the company featured African-Americans in its advertising, breaking a taboo (which Coca-Cola did not do until 1955). While this drew the ire of racist Southerners, PepsiCo, the company behind Pepsi, gained respect in progressive circles and sold more drinks to black people. The advertising campaigns in the fifties and sixties were explicitly aimed at young people, who the company quickly declared to be the Pepsi generation.

However, it was a conservative politician of all people who gave the otherwise liberal brand its breakthrough. PepsiCo hired US Vice President Richard Nixon as an unofficial brand ambassador. When he went on a trip abroad to the Soviet Union in 1959, the marketing department had an idea: why not convince the communist leader Nikita Khrushchev to try a Pepsi? After all, if even the supreme socialist can't resist the capitalist temptation of a Pepsi, who can? In fact, Nixon succeeded in putting a Pepsi in Khrushchev's hand, and the company was delighted to distribute the resulting picture. Nixon remained loyal to the brand, and when he became president in 1969, there was only Pepsi in the White House, no more Coca-Cola. Over the following decades, Pepsi was always regarded as the Republican cola, Coca-Cola as the drink of the Democrats.

The war escalates

In 1975, Pepsi launched the next offensive against Coca-Cola: the Pepsi Challenge. All over the United States, employees sat down at the side of the road and had passers-by taste two cups of Coke blind. The result: Pepsi outperformed its competitor purely on taste. This new marketing coup drove sales figures even higher and finally made Coca-Cola sweat. Its market share had continued to fall from its peak of around 60 percent and was now approaching 25 percent. It didn't help that Coca-Cola secretly recreated the blind tastings and came up with similar results.

So the New Coke had to come along, a drink that was similar in taste to Pepsi. The reactions were rather modest. Pepsi, always quick with a good marketing strategy, celebrated the measure as a capitulation in the cola war and spontaneously gave its employees time off on the day of the announcement. After just three months, Coca-Cola did at least half a backward roll and reintroduced the original recipe under the label "Coca-Cola Classic".

Curiously, the New Coke disaster turned out to be a success for Coca-Cola in retrospect. Consumers were startled and began to buy Coca-Cola Classic, and sales figures suddenly rose rapidly again. Since then, people have repeatedly voiced the suspicion that it was all a set-up to finally get off the defensive against Pepsi. Coca-Cola, however, denies this to this day.

The aftermath

At the end of the 1980s, the Cola Wars became less intense. There were no large-scale marketing campaigns. Pepsi fired up the competition once again in the nineties with its "Drink Pepsi, Get Stuff" campaign. Pepsi customers could collect points and secure free Pepsi merchandise, and later also non-branded products. Coca-Cola followed suit with Coke Rewards.

To this day, there are still minor disputes from time to time. In 2019, for example, the Super Bowl, the final game of the American football league NFL, took place in Atlanta, where the Coca-Cola Company has its headquarters. However, the NFL sponsor was Pepsi. The company took the opportunity to use some appropriate advertising slogans, such as "Pepsi in Atlanta. How Refreshing" or "Hey Atlanta, Thanks For Hosting. We'll Bring The Drinks".

And the New Coke? It actually fulfilled its actual purpose. In a blind taste test conducted by the Wall Street Journal, it beat Pepsi and Classic Coke. But the idea that Donald Keough was so convinced of still died a slow death. New Coke was first renamed Coke II in 1992 - Classic later became "normal" Coke again - and finally discontinued altogether in 2002. The drink then celebrated a surprising comeback in 2019: because New Coke was featured in the TV series "Stranger Things", Coca-Cola launched 500,000 cans on the market as a promotional stunt. The enthusiasm was so great that the company's website collapsed. "New Coke lost the battle, but won the war," one journalist stated.

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