Word: coke
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Brian Dyson, president of Coca-Cola USA, believes some people are tasting things in the new drink that are not there. Example: the new Coke is not less fizzy as some complain. "There is a zero difference in carbonation between the new and the old," he says. Dyson insists that the bickering will not work: "We are going to stick with what we have done...
Weldon Tanner, 43, an Atlanta businessman, has been stashing the old Coke in his pantry since April 23, the day Coke announced the change. He often consumes six bottles a day, though, and had reduced his inventory to ten cases by the end of last week. Tanner plans to head north, to small towns in North Carolina, to look for more. "I plan to work the boondocks," he says, "and I'm sure I'll find some there...
...Huntington Woods, Mich., Libby Lavine, 35, is drinking down her stock of 700 bottles and cans of Coke, and has begun a campaign to bring back the old Coke. Says she: "There is only one person who likes the new Coke and that is Bill Cosby. I want to get thousands of letters, and my husband and I will take them down to Atlanta and give them to the Coca-Cola company...
...still too early to tell how the new Coke is doing. The sketchy numbers out so far are distorted by the enormous publicity over the taste change. So swiftly did the word spread, says Coke, that 81% of the U.S. population knew of it within 24 hours, more people than were aware in July 1969 that Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. By now, says Dyson, fully 96% of Americans, or 225 million people, know that Coke has altered its taste...
...Coke officials say they are pleased by the early returns. In May, Coke sales shot up a sparkling 8% over the same month in 1984, double the normal growth rate. Some of the increase included sales of old Coke still on store shelves, but most of it was the new drink. That amounts to a lot of bubbles in a business in which every percentage-point increase in the market share adds $280 million in retail sales on a yearly basis. Coke claims its surveys show that 120 million Americans have tried the drink if only out of curiosity...