If I Was In Charge of Coke… or Pepsi

This week, I am offer­ing a sug­ges­tion that can be eas­ily imple­mented by either Soft Drink giant.  How­ever, since I have named 2 com­pa­nies, I will make 2 sug­ges­tions.  Fair enough?  Alright, here goes…

If I was in charge of Coke the first thing I would do would be to bring back real cane sugar.  I would elim­i­nate High Fruc­tose Corn Syrup from the core prod­uct, mak­ing the deli­cious bev­er­age it once was.  The sec­ond thing I would do would be to pack­age it in glass bottles.

Why?  First, any­one older than me can vividly remem­ber what it was like to grab an ice cold bot­tle of Coke, and chug it down on a hot sum­mer day.  Deli­cious.  I was reminded of this on Father’s Day.  For lunch, we went to City BBQ for a father’s day feast.  In addi­tion to the deli­cious Car­olina Pulled Pork Sand­wich that I ate, I was delighted to dis­cover that City Bar­be­cue now car­ries icy cold, glass bot­tles of Cheer­wine — a soda that is rarely found out­side of the Car­oli­nas.  Best of all, it was made with real sugar.  It was so deli­cious and refresh­ing that I went back and bought another bottle.

It got me think­ing, why wouldn’t Coke and Pepsi take advan­tage of this.  After all, High Fruc­tose Corn Syrup has plenty of detrac­tors.  It has been sus­pected, but not proven (please no law­suits), of con­tribut­ing to dia­betes and obe­sity.  More impor­tant to me, sugar just tastes bet­ter.  Per­haps in a blind taste test, I would never know the dif­fer­ence, but I am not blind.   I read the ingre­di­ents, and frankly I am pre­dis­posed to believe sugar tastes bet­ter.  (See Seth Godin’s All Mar­keters are Liars for more on that idea)

Now, surely I would not be alone in this pre­dis­po­si­tion toward all nat­ural sugar and glass bot­tles.  Think of the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion, the largest seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion by the way, and how they might wax nos­tal­gic for a good old fash­ioned Coke “like the singing inter­na­tional hip­pies in the com­mer­cials used to drink.”  No, soft drinks aren’t that healthy to begin with, but if they were less unhealthy — espe­cially than that of com­pe­ti­tion, — that would be a sell­ing point for some.  The glass bot­tles are reusable, and offer the sweet 10 cent bounty for turn­ing them back in.  Being made of glass, which is made from sand, they would be more bio-friendly.

Because corn is in high demand rel­a­tive to ethanol, the use of sugar would not be as cost pro­hib­i­tive as in the past.  Thus, the switch to sugar might not even change the price.

So in sum­mary, bet­ter tast­ing , more healthy, more eco-friendly prod­uct that would appeal to the largest group of con­sumers with the most dis­pos­able income on the planet.   That is what I would do.

How about you?  What would you do first if you were in charge of Coke?

High-fructose corn syrup — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia