No! No! Not my secret recipes!
Well, you must have heard the big news. The story, essentially,
is this: three people, one a Coca-Cola employee,
tried to sell Pepsi some of Coke’s secret recipes.
Pepsi called the Feds, and, because spreading a
person’s secrets is bad manners but spreading a corporation’s secrets
is illegal, those three people are now probably going to prison.
I have a couple of thoughts about this. First, if I was Pepsi, I’d be a little insulted. I mean, what’s the implication: that the only reason my cola tastes like that is because I don’t know how to make it more like Coke? The hell with that! If you ask me, Coke should be trying to buy my secret recipes! I’ll tell you something for free, mister: we here at Pepsi already know how to make Coke. Coke, that’s what we scrape off the bottom of our vats and give away to pig farmers and the homeless.
Second, if I was Coke, I’d be insulted, too. These guys were offering up Coke’s newest product, which hasn’t even been released yet, and for that they wanted $75,000. I bet that’s less than you can win if you look under the right bottle cap of that product, when it comes out. And not only that, but Pepsi wasn’t interested. That’s got to be deflating. Those Coke developers probably spent months, maybe years, creeping around and looking over their shoulders for Pepsi spies. Then the recipe gets out, Pepsi takes a look, and says, “Nah, we’re good, thanks.” How is Coke meant to market that now? It could come up with the most brilliant campaign in advertising history, and all Pepsi needs to do is say, “Yeah, we got offered that. Didn’t want it.”
The only good for either company is that it encourages people to believe that colas are the result of secret, mystical recipes, and not cough syrup plus sugar. (I mean, come on. What’s all that advertising for? Because you’ve never heard of Coke or Pepsi? I get very suspicious about products that need to teach people why they like them. And food is the worst; we already know that what we think of as “taste” only bears a tenuous relationship to the chemical composition of what we put in our mouths. Taste is mostly marketing. All you need to do to prove that is try to feed a three-year-old.)
Comments
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shabooty (#637)
Location: D.C./V.A/M.D.
Quote: "I will shake your foundation. I will shake the f**cking rafters. Nobody'll be the same -Danny Bonaduce ....& go visit my blog @: http://www.shabooty.com"
Posted: 6100 days ago
JOKE! U know I love ya Max :)
I esp. agree on the last comment... the last thing breast(s) milk/[feeding] needs is a marketing campaign... them _cans_ are proven :)
and finally I further agree on the taste is marketing point...
that's why when you first start dating a girl she has no problem with "taste" --then ya wife her up and that's the end of that act :)
cheers!skeet!andlove!
Yenzo (#829)
Location: Secret underwater pyramid base in the Pacific
Quote: "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe (Carl Sagan)"
Posted: 6100 days ago
John Doe (#797)
Location: Live from Omicron Persei 8
Quote: "You're just jealous because the little voices only talk to me."
Posted: 6100 days ago
Guido (#2510)
Location: Bern, Switzerland
Posted: 6100 days ago
Oh, and the feds are just puppets in this game of course :)
Rod McBride (#688)
Location: Gardner, KS
Quote: "www.MidwestRockLobster.blogspot.com"
Posted: 6100 days ago
Plus, I would expect the labs at both companies have a pretty good bead on how the other one does their thing. And you're absolutely right about the marketing 'ingredient.' Remember New Coke? Which, I suspect, was just old Coke with corn syrup instead of cane sugar, and they just couldn't get it to match at all, so they pretended to reinvent the soda on purpose.
Then they brought back the 'old' Coke and claimed it was Classic, and everyone said, Wait, this is NOT the same as the old stuff. Why can't they just go back to the old formula?
Because cane sugar costs a ton more, that's why, but if we bombard you with enough commercials, you'll drink the corn syrup and think you like it.
Christopher Okula (#1490)
Location: Norfolk, Virginia, USA
Quote: "There's no sense in marketing to a marketer."
Posted: 6099 days ago
Dom Pody (#2475)
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Quote: "I may not agree with a word you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire"
Posted: 6099 days ago
<3 Syrup
prodigal_son (#2479)
Location: NYC
Quote: ""For the love of God, man -- put some pants on!""
Posted: 6099 days ago
Consumer X - "I'll have a Coke"
Soda Jerk - "No Coke, Pepsi"
Consumer X - "Okay, Pepsi then"
Christian (#2192)
Location: Calgary, Canada
Quote: "If being a nerd was baseball, I'd be starting quarterback!"
Posted: 6099 days ago
The three people who came up with this "brilliant" idea may very well belong in prison as a part of natural selection.
David (#1848)
Location: Texas
Quote: "Delighted!"
Posted: 6099 days ago
Hobbie (#1359)
Location: Cornwall, England
Quote: "There was a little man in his hair!"
Posted: 6099 days ago
In fact, as I said to Max in an email once, the place where I eat every Friday doesn't do either as such, but rather imports cokes from different countries around the world and charges twice as much as a normal can of your UK coke variety for you to see the difference. Though you don't get to choose which country, that would be too easy. I was surprised to discover that the different nationality cokes actually do taste differently, which I can only assume is a product of what companies are allowed to pollute food with in individual systems of law.
An extension of the "do they sell coke or pepsi here" law is the "buy-one-get-one-free" corrollary, where the supermarket always has at least one softdrink on special offer and not the others. Who doesn't just get the cheapest anyway? "Err, coke is two for the price of one, but I'll get the pepsi anyway" just makes you look like a moron at the till.
This week it was neither at the local Tesco. Irn Bru was the one on offer, so up yours coke and pepsi.
austin (#2462)
Location: rhode island
Quote: "hmmm...bleh..."
Posted: 6098 days ago
But yeah. No one really cares whether or not they drink coke or pepsi. When coke comes out with the new stuff, pepsi will do the same. like always. Cherry coke =cherry pepsi, coke with lemon= pepsi lemon, vanilla coke = vanilla pepsi. It's the same stuff in different brands that are released at different times.
anyway, enough with my rant.
CameoAppearance (#2439)
Location: Vancouver, BC
Quote: "Please tell me I'm not related to these people."
Posted: 6097 days ago
However, most other types of pop (which I will always take over cola) are more or less interchangeable within their flavours, although some (root beer, for example) have some sub-flavours and/or regional variations. But the point being made is that the two big COLA brands taste different.
gdotcom (#2522)
Location: Oz
Quote: "I can explain it to you, but I can't understnad it for you."
Posted: 6095 days ago
Just finished "Syrup" (the book I mean, my daily dose of the product itself can wait until morning), and I was wondering where Scat's name came from. Is it more than just coincidence that "scat" is slang for someone who derives pleasure from being shat upon by a loved one?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scat
G
Lancer Kind (#1547)
Location: Redmond WA
Quote: "Be nice to the man with the gun."
Posted: 6086 days ago
The execs are concerned that sugar doesn't spike your blood sugar hard enough, so they've come up with a more damaging substitute. Naturally, the very officious people in the US's Food and Drug Agency don't have much comment about this and it's relationship to diabetes. However, they are very officious about drug re-importation because those low-cost Canadian drugs are going to kill Americans.
By the way, ever notice that places that serve only soft drinks like coke or pepsi products are places where the food is crappy for you anyway.
==>Lancer---
Theo (#2909)
Quote: ""I don't take no stock in dead people"- Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn""
Posted: 5902 days ago
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