Clear Cola

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Under Clear Cola (dt. Clear Cola ) means Cola , in which the added food coloring caramel (in Europe: E 150d ) is missing and is therefore transparent. Colorless Cola was the first to be marketed by the manufacturer Pepsi under the brand name "Crystal Pepsi". There are currently only a few transparent cola variants on the market worldwide, for example the Peruvian Inca Cola .

Crystal Pepsi

A bottle of Crystal Pepsi from the USA, 2016

In 1992, PepsiCo began selling a transparent, decaffeinated cola under the name "Crystal Pepsi" in various test markets in the USA , including Switzerland . The strategy initially promised success. Pepsi was responding to a trend that favored things that were "pure", or at least looked like it. Brands like Evian and Perrier began to establish themselves on the US market, which Pepsi wanted to respond to with the Crystal brand.

Response from Coca-Cola

The Coca-Cola Company also brought out a variation of the soft drink Tab in January 1993 , under the name "Tab Clear". In contrast to the competing product from Pepsi, "Tab Clear" contained caffeine and positioned itself as a diet drink. While Pepsi emphasized with its product and the associated press releases that a Clear Cola would be a full complement to the brand, the Coca-Cola group countered. By bringing the competing product onto the market as a tab , the company made it clear that the real Coca-Cola would not be available in a clear version. Tab was also associated with calorie-conscious women in the consciousness of American consumers at the time, while the Coke and Pepsi brands were intended to appeal more to the mainstream . Sergio Zyman, who worked for Coca-Cola advertising at the time, describes the scenario 15 years later: “Our goal was to destroy the whole Clear-Cola segment by making it diffuse. Consumers shouldn't find out whether they should buy Clear Cola because it tasted different, in fact Tab Clear tasted very different from Crystal Pepsi, whether it looked different, or because it was calorie-reduced. ”( Sergio Zyma :) Because of the low success the product discontinued after less than a year.

Identity problems

In addition to Coca-Cola's successful diffusion strategy, Crystal Pepsi failed because of a general problem with Clear Colas. While the taste is mostly designed in such a way that the product tastes like regular cola, the consumers reacted uncertainly to a product that looked like lemonade and tasted like cola. While blind tastings , in which the test subjects saw nothing, confirmed that Clear Cola tasted like cola, it was different in experiments when the consumers could see the cola. There were contradicting statements, test subjects were not able to recognize a clear taste direction. The sensory and visual information diverged and the brand created a diffuse image.

While Crystal Pepsi also disappeared from the shelves in 1993, Pepsi-Cola tried again with Crystal in 1994 , but with even worse results than the first attempt. Only with a real mineral water, Aquafina , was Pepsi able to successfully jump on the trend. Another Clear Cola product was offered in Mexico for a short time in 2008 . In 2015, Pepsi gave away in the United States in a Twitter - Campaign 13,000 six-packs Crystal Pepsi, which had been prepared for a new formula. In 2016 and 2017, American and Canadian customers were once again able to purchase the drink for a short time in stores and via the Amazon retail portal, but in both cases production was stopped relatively quickly. In contrast to the previous editions from 2015–2017, all editions have been enriched with caffeine and sodium benzoate .

See also

supporting documents

  1. ↑ http://www.highbeam.com ( Memento of the original from June 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Washington Post report, 1992 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.highbeam.com
  2. ^ COMPANY NEWS; Pepsi Tries New Diet Cola Abroad New York Times article, March 2, 1992
  3. ↑ a b Joe Marconi: The brand marketing book: creating, managing, and extending the value of your brand McGraw-Hill Professional, 2000, ISBN 0-8442-2257-7 , pp. 181-182.
  4. ^ A b Matt Haig: Brand failures: the truth about the 100 biggest branding mistakes of all time Kogan Page Publishers, 2005, ISBN 0-7494-4433-9 .
  5. ↑ a b Bernard James Mullin et al .: sports marketing, Volume 13 Human Kinetics, 2007, ISBN 0-7360-6052-9 , S. 168th
  6. ↑ Coke Adds a Clear Cola To Its 'New Age' Stable Article, New York Times, December 15, 1992
  7. ↑ Graham Lorimer Moseley: Painful yarns: metaphors & stories to help understand the biology of pain Dancing Giraffe Press 1998, ISBN 0-9803588-0-9 , pp. 35-36.
  8. ↑ Is Pepsi Clear the return of Crystal Pepsi? ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Compare products on BevReview.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bevreview.com
  9. ^ Sarah Whitten: A six-pack of Crystal Pepsi could be yours ... if you win this sweepstakes. In: cnbc.com. December 9, 2015, accessed June 25, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Kristina Kielblock: Crystal Pepsi is coming back! Clearer than ever & you can buy them! In: giga.de. June 30, 2016. Retrieved June 25, 2017 .