Food Theory: Coke's SECRET Plot To Kill Crystal Pepsi!

ah the 90s a simpler time when playgrounds were wooden and gravy was clear crystal gravy gravy like this in all seriousness the gravy wasn't clean Pepsi was as part of a consumer push for healthier products the clear craze took off in a big way clear soap clear game boys and of course Clear Pepsi Crystal Pepsi to be exact a soda that looked pure like water a product that would go down in history as one of the most famous failed products of all time down there right at the bottom alongside Virtual Boy and Google Glass but was it actually Pepsi's fault see there's a Sinister tale Behind The Disappearance of this clear soda a story of intentional Sabotage by Coca-Cola a Kamikaze Mission designed to assassinate the biggest competitor it's a story that sounds too crazy to make up a mystery that is 30 years in the making that we are gonna solve today did Coca-Cola intentionally sabotage their own products in an effort to take down Crystal Pepsi we're gonna find out foreign [Music] hello Internet welcome to food Theory the show that's less than two years old but still fondly remembers the 90s based on the demographics watching the channel I'm the only one so old also based on those same demographics more of you should probably subscribe to the channel since less than half of you watching right now have just saying our content goes down smoother than Crystal Clear gravy anyway I know what you're probably thinking an episode dedicated to Crystal Pepsi in the year 2022 seems completely random totally out of touch but honestly it's not earlier this year Pepsi re-released a special edition of their iconic failure to celebrate its 30-year anniversary 300 lucky people want a six-pack of this iconic failed Cola regardless of the taste though the whole thing got me curious about the history of Crystal Pepsi like what went wrong exactly were people just not interested in a clear soda or was something else going on well upon doing the research I very quickly stumbled across an onslaught of viral headlines Reddit posts and Twitter threads all about how Coca-Cola had gone on a suicide mission to try and take down Crystal Pepsi no joke as The Story Goes they set up one of their signature sodas tab to get an intentionally bad tasting clear Rebrand in order to take the public perception of all clear beverages from that point forward taking down not only tab clear but Crystal Pepsi in the process but that couldn't be true right could self-sabotage like that have really worked or is this just a food myth that the internet's made into a fact today we dig into the murky history behind Crystal Pepsi to see what actually tanked this product was the failure of Crystal Pepsi and inevitability or was it actually the most brilliant 4D chess move a food company could have ever made now as I mentioned in the cold open clear things became a fad in the 90s because they were actually perceived as being healthier clear drink pure content it's an idea that on the surface seems absurd after all crystal Pepsi has just as much sugar and calories as its Brown counterparts not like this thing being clearer actually made it healthier right but you know for as absurd as the idea on my team the drink being clear so it must be more pure is actually kinda true in Crystal Pepsi's case this is basically what Pepsi looks like when you don't add food coloring the brown that we all associate with Cola drinks it's not the actual color look at the ingredients for Pepsi and you'll see that it includes caramel color ditto for Coca-Cola and those chemicals aren't always harmless previously Coke and Pepsi got their color from a chemical called 4-methylimidazole which is as of 2011 considered to be a carcinogen by the state of California since nothing is going to kill yourselves worse than warning this is known to cause cancer in the state of California they decided to change the formula so yeah Crystal Pepsi with its lack of food dyes actually had fewer additives and was in fact a pure healthier product at least as healthy as a beverage can be when it's still packed with 69 grams of sugar nice nice and they weren't the only ones to chase the clear Trend either Coors joined the clear drink fad with zema a clear beer that achieved the transparent look by running it through a charcoal filter unfortunately the process that removed the color also removed most of the flavor as culture writer Chuck Klosterman put it zema was quote the opposite of an acquired taste not to be outdone Miller brought the world Miller clear beer which unsurprisingly also wound up to be a big flop but while the world clearly wasn't ready for Clear tasteless beer they eagerly seemed to lap up Crystal Pepsi Pepsi invested 40 million dollars in marketing introducing the world to the clear cola in the iconic Super Bowl ad featuring Van Halen which might just be the most 90s thing that you watch all week but apparently that Big Marketing push paid off Crystal Pepsi immediately captured one percent of the soft drink Market which according to the publisher of Beverage digest was the equivalent of 474 million dollars in retail sales not too shabby for a brand new drink so where did it go wrong if sales were so strong why would it disappear a year later enter Coke the ascent of Crystal Pepsi spelled bad news for Coca-Cola they were basically left with two options neither of which were particularly good they could either ignore the clear drink Trend and let Crystal Pepsi dominate the newly created market for clear cola or they could come up with a clear version of coke themselves thereby validating Pepsi's idea and setting themselves up as a copycat in the public eye either approach seemed like admitting defeat so Coca-Cola went with option three self-destruct rather than trying to compete with Crystal Pepsi and cash in themselves Coca-Cola would maliciously destroy the entire clear drink Market if we can't have a clear soda then no one can so what was the plan well Sergio Zieman Chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola planned to release a product that would fail on purpose tab clear remember tab no I don't either to be honest it was Coca-Cola's first diet drink marketed to the ladies who wanted to stay in shape to keep their man interested keeping your shape in shape has a reward enjoy tab and be a mind sticker ah casual sexism the best way to sell your food product anyway tab was popular during the 60s and 70s but by the 90s it was on its way out thanks to Diet Coke and here was the Evil Genius of Coca-Cola's plan to destroy Pepsi rather than try to create a strong competitor to Crystal Pepsi they intentionally created a weak one they set themselves up to lose on purpose by releasing the least desirable version of a clear soda why would they do such a thing well when Coca-Cola released tab clear grocery stores did the logical thing and placed it right next to Crystal Pepsi and as a result Crystal Pepsi became associated with tab clear in the eyes of the public something that according to Sergio Zieman was intentional quote Pepsi was basically gonna say crystal Pepsi was a mainstream drink it has all this great taste and we Coca-Cola said no Crystal Pepsi is actually a diet drink even though it wasn't because tab had the attributes of diet which was its demise within three or five months tab clear was dead and so was crystal Pepsi tab clear was deliberately sent out to grocery store shelves to die and when a day it succeeded in taking Crystal Pepsi down with it just like that Pepsi's flashy new product that had been poised to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue per year was doomed in the words of Coca-Cola's Chief marketing officer quote we did a Kamikaze on them commit suicide and kill them in the process the rad new trend of clear cola was suddenly now nothing but a joke it's a cool story of underhanded corporate sabotage of one business's brilliant Maneuvers to try and take down their competition honestly it is no surprise that this story would go on to become a viral hit across the internet and yet I think it's a lie I think that this was all just revisionist history trying to make someone look all Galaxy brain when in truth he was all smooth brained the entire time I also think it's a prime example of having to double check where the information that you're getting online is coming from first off it's important to consider the source of the information this story about Coca-Cola's brilliant suicide mission all comes from one guy Sergio Zieman Coca-Cola's Chief marketing officer it's true he would know the subject better than anyone else but he'd also have the biggest incentive to lie about it since the story he's telling is basically trying to spin a failed product into an intentional Act of Brilliance and here's the thing tab clear wouldn't be his only massive mistake according to Fortune Magazine back in the 80s Zeeman was also the executive who pushed to replace Coke's signature flavor you know the tastes that had been the market leader for the last 98 years with a different tasting Cola flavor called New Coke now considered to be one of the biggest marketing blunders in history Zeeman was also The Mastermind behind fruit Topia another 90s Coca-Cola product that was off the shelves less than a decade later so for him to come in and say hey guys I know that it seems like I was behind two of the biggest failed product launches of all time but that second one totally on purpose absolutely crossed my heart hope to die it doesn't necessarily mean that he's lying but it does mean that we should probably be skeptical and skeptical I was so I decided to dig into the facts around tab clear which is where things got even more fishy for example consider the basic timeline Pepsi spent 40 million dollars marketing Crystal Pepsi in 1993 but it's impossible for tab clear to have been developed as a reaction to the sudden popularity of the drink considering tab clear first released in the U.S in December of 1992. another part of zeeman's story that seems suspicious is the idea that he got the public to associate Crystal Pepsi with bad tasting diet drinks by putting tab next to it when diet Crystal Pepsi was in fact a very real thing that was offered right alongside regular Crystal Pepsi in the same ads so clearly Pepsi themselves didn't think that having a clear diet cola sitting next to Crystal Pepsi on the Shelf would taint the brand why would the completely unrelated tab do it instead here's another part of the semen story that doesn't add up the entire reason that tab clear was sent out to store shelves was so it could be placed next to Crystal Pepsi right but tab clear was released in Japan in March of 1993 a country where Crystal Pepsi had no presence it makes no sense if you believe that tab clear was sent out to sabotage Crystal Pepsi but that move makes total sense if you believe the more obvious conclusion that tab clear was just another product trying to find an audience of people who would buy it in fact the more you look at the actual history behind tab clear the more it looks like any other product rollout for example they initially released tab clear in 10 test markets before eventually going wide with it after a positive reception if the entire purpose was to launch an intentionally bad product why bother seeing whether people liked it why wouldn't you just immediately ship it out everywhere to torpedo your competitor head of Soviet forces is served top clear and very cold glass which sticks to his lip he complains of glass frost his General tier Glasnost the Berlin Wall Falls sorry tab clear you weren't responsible for the fall of the Berlin wall and you weren't responsible for the downfall of Crystal Pepsi and hey if the entire reason you existed was to bring down your competitor why would you continue to pour more of your own marketing dollars into TV advertisements like that in 1994. well after Crystal Pepsi was in its decline but you want to know the evidence point that really seals the deal look at it the entire point of tab clear is that it's a clear beverage but it was only sold in opaque aluminum cans surely if the goal was for people to confuse tab clear with Crystal Pepsi they would have at least bothered to make them look similar yes that's just the kind of marketing Brilliance I'd expect from a guy who thought that new Coke was a good idea so if it wasn't tab clear then what did it what tanked Crystal Pepsi well earlier I mentioned that analysts estimated Crystal Pepsi's potential annual revenue to be 474 million dollars in retail sales sounds like a huge number nearly half a billion but that estimate was also from March of 1993 when the product at home only been out for several months and had just had itself a massive Super Bowl push that turned out to be its best-selling month turns out Crystal Pepsi's market share declined to half of its previous Levels by the end of 1993. people were willing to give the product a try they just didn't like it and they didn't stick around and you see that's the real truth here yum Brand's chairman David C Novak is credited with introducing the crystal Pepsi concept and in an interview with Fast Company he said this quote I still think it's the best idea I ever had and the worst executed people were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way and they were right it would have been nice if I'd made sure the product tasted good end quote and see that's just it it tasted bad at best it was passable but also weird because it was clear watch any online review of Crystal Pepsi and that's exactly the sentiment that you see tastes like Pepsi with an aftertaste of modeling clay it started at Pepsi and then went I don't remember Crystal Pepsi tasting anything like Cola I don't think it tastes like Pepsi it was the only thing available and I was really thirsty I I would drink Crystal Clear Pepsi again but I wouldn't go out and buy it it's messing with my brain I don't know my eyes and my taste buds like are not connecting on this yeah it like tastes like Cola candy smell don't believe the headlines my friends in the end the only thing that killed Crystal Pepsi was crystal Pepsi itself sorry Coca-Cola marketing guy you have enough failures to your name you don't get to claim this one too but hey that's just a theory a food Theory Bottoms Up [Music] come on

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,380,917

Keywords: coke, pepsi, crystal pepsi, coke vs pepsi, pepsi vs coke, diet coke, diet pepsi, crystal pepsi taste test, soda, soda taste test, coke studio, nitro pepsi, pepsi nitro, pepsi halftime show, crystal pepsi commercial, tab, tab clear, coca cola, tab clear crystal pepsi, crystal pepsi tab clear, food theory, food theorists, matpat, matpat coke, matpat diet coke, film theory, game theory

Id: YTWNt7lkaZw

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/damnsignins]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/coca-colas-first-gamer-flavor-and-the-history-of-game-and-soda-tie-ins/