The Decline of 7Up...What Happened?

[Music] seven up I think of them is kind of like the soda that has been left behind now I realize we all still recognize the brand and given the fact that they're still sold practically all over the place I think it would be unfair to call it a total failure but at the same time I don't think there is any other soda brand that has experienced such a drastic decline given their current state you may be surprised to learn that there was maybe a 30-year span starting in the 1940s where 7 Up was widely considered to be the third best-selling soda in the United States almost anybody at that time could have told you that Coke and Pepsi were at the top of course while 7even up was out there doing their own thing as the biggest non-cola product or as they called it uncola that was actually a really significant word that I will be talking more about but the last 50 years or so have not been great for seven up in the 1970s they started losing popularity and by the end of the 1990s they had slowly fallen in the ranks to become the ninth bestselling soda which is more or less where they remain today there's been so much happening with 7 up over the years that I'm excited to talk about see the brand goes all the way back to the 1920s it was created by Charles Grigg who already had extensive experience in both advertising and soda creation a decade earlier while working at a Manufacturing Company he had invented an orange flavored soda called Whistle however disputes with management cause him to quit his job and leave that Creation with the company a similar thing happened again where he created another orange flavored soda this time called a howdy he left the company he was working for while he created it but here he was able to take his invention with him and start his own business that would sell it the issue there was that orange crush was already well established on the market and difficult to compete against so as howdy struggled to find customers Charles Grigg spent a couple years creating a much more unique lemon lime flavored soda and once it was finally introduced in 1929 it had no major direct competitors no one else out there was mass-producing a lemon lime flavored soda like that so seven up stood out to the customers actually it wasn't called seven up at first it had a much more ridiculous name it was called bib label lithiated lemon lime soda he chose that name because like many others at the time he wanted it to be perceived as a health drink it actually did contain the drug lithium so in the early years it was commonly bought by people looking to stabilize their mood or seeking other potential health benefits but thankfully within a few years the name was changed to seven up though the exact Origins behind that name have never been confirmed by Charles Grigg or the company itself different theories suggest that it was meant to reflect the seven ingredients or the 7 oun size of the bottle I guess he may have seen cattle branded with a similar Mark and like the looks of it I don't know my guess is that he just felt that the name 7even up was both catchy and memorable and maybe he even wanted a bit of mystery surrounding it either way the unique flavor the catchy name and the perceived health benefits all helped seven up become one of the country's biggest soda brands in the 1950s they actually worked with Disney on a marketing campaign that featured a rooster named fresh up Freddy he was an entertaining mascot that was featured during a popular Disney TV series called Zoro it made the drink much more popular with children and I believe that helped lead to the classroom game called heads up seven up I don't know if you're familiar but the teachers used to have us play that in elementary school in the 1990s so that goes much further back than I would have thought now the late 1960s is when seven up reached their absolute Peak and that is mostly due to one of the most effective advertising campaigns of all time seven up started calling themselves the uncola as a way to separate themselves from Coke and Pepsi who were obviously both colas already seemingly a smart idea but to fully understand the genius of it you have to consider the culture and the overall mentality of the younger generation at the time this was during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement when hippies were all over the place challenging Authority and severely questioning the government and the established way of thinking I don't want to make this a US History lesson about the 1960s but but you get the idea that it was becoming part of youth culture to challenge the standard so in 1968 when 7Up positioned Coke and Pepsi to be the popular standard and themselves to be the outside alternative that really resonated with the younger people maybe the most famous commercial of the campaign featured actor Jeffrey holder the first black actor to be featured in one of their commercials by the way cleverly comparing Cola nuts To uncola Nuts the uncola nuts were just a lime and a lemon as I said that was their hype it launched their popularity higher than it ever was before but sadly they could not maintain it just a few years later by the early 1970s a 7UP started to decline and things just continued getting worse remember for so many years a 7UP was the only notable lemon lime soda on the market and all of that changed in a major way in 1961 when Coca-Cola introduced Sprite within 5 years it was available to practically everybody in the US and by the 1970s it was stealing away market share and becoming the new favorite to many customers throughout the country and just overall becoming a major concern for 7even up in 1978 7Up was bought by the Tobacco Company Philip Morris I want to make it clear that 7Up was already struggling and despite a lack of experience in the soda industry many believed that Philip Morris could potentially be the perfect ones to revive the brand see in the Years leading up to this their marketing approach was largely responsible for popularizing the cigarette brand moral bro and the beer brand Miller maybe not the best Brands to be promoting but it did prove what they could do so people were optimistic about the acquisition but honestly when looking back it seems like Reviving 7 up at that time would have been almost an impossible task consider that during the uncola campaign that was so successful the main goal of it was to get people away from Cola and toward lemon lime but now with Sprite on the market and such a big way and with Pepsi soon introducing their own version called slice that had its own gimmick containing 10% fruit juice simply pushing people away from Cola didn't necessarily mean that they were pushing people toward 7 Up So the new advertising campaign was not to focus on the lemon lime but to focus on the fact that 7 Up did not have caffeine while many of the other leading sodas did in 1981 they even introduced a mostly caffeine-free Cola called like that was obviously never too successful introducing like like doesn't add caffeine like Coke and Pepsi like gets its excitement from full Rich Cola taste Pepsi free came out the following year caffeine free Coca-Cola came out the year after that and many of the bottlers had loyalty to those brand so they wouldn't even distribute like and seven up had a hard time getting it out there in the end seven up lost tens of millions of dollars for Philip Morris a struggling brand when they bought it was struggling even worse 8 years later when they were admitting defeat and finally looking to sell it I mean with all the resources the experience the relationships the customer loyalty of the Coke and Pepsi companies how could Philip Morris have possibly competed with them in fact it sure seems like the only way 7 Up truly had a chance at becoming significant again is if either Coke or Pepsi were to take it over and in 1986 that came so close to happening there was already an agreement to sell 7 Up 2 Pepsi where a Pepsi representative said 7Up is a top quality product that has the potential to become one of the most popular soft drinks in the world they even said Pepsi would put its full marketing muscle behind 7 up to build share of the market obviously they had big plans for it meanwhile Coca-Cola had agreed to buy Dr Pepper but ultimately the FTC stepped in and said that neither deal was allowed to happen because it would create too much of a monopoly within the industry though I will point out that Pepsi did buy the international operations of 7 Up just nothing in their core Market of the United States but what did end up happening in the US is a bit confusing essentially an investment Bank from Dallas named Hicks and hos put together a deal where they bought Dr Pepper and a leveraged Buy out for about $400 million then only a few months later they also bought seven up for 240 million 2 years later the two companies were combined into a new company called Dr Pepper 7 Up in a deal that valued them at 1.3 billion dollar kind of a strange situation where instead of competing against each other as parts of Coke and Pepsi they combined forces to try to compete against Coke and Pepsi and this new combined company was fairly successful in that their sales were increasing each year but it was a situation where Dr Pepper was growing like crazy while 7 Up was continuing to struggle by 1993 when they became a public company as a way to raise money to pay off part of the billion dollars in debt that they had accumulated from The Leverage buyouts Dr Pepper was the fourth bestselling soda brand while seven up was the eighth bestselling the issue there I believe was the fact that Koke and Pepsi were heavily promoting their own versions of 7 up while Dr Pepper remained mostly unrivaled in 1995 Dr Pepper 7Up was acquired by Cadbury scheps for $1.7 billion they were famously a candy company that had been slowly acquiring all of these soft drink Brands including crush a few years earlier so that's pretty interesting how 7even up finally teamed up with the brand that indirectly helped Inspire their Creation in the first place clearly the attractive part of the acquisition was the Dr Pepper brand and this is where seven up really started to get lost in the shuffle I mean look at how the New York Times reported the deal they didn't even think 7 Up was important enough to mention in the headline 3 years later 7 Up had their first ever formula change another bad sign I think it was subtle though just giving it a stronger lemon lime flavor and they dropped their uncola slogan as an attempt to attract younger customers that UNCA campaign had been so effective in connecting with the Youth of the 1960s that by the 1990s those same people were the ones buying seven up just 30 years older and giving the brand the reputation that it was for older people in 2008 CAD B schwep spun off all of these beverages into their own company that was named Dr Pepper Snapple Group again being overshadowed by the other brands and finally 10 years later that company was bought by curig for over $18 billion forming curig Dr Pepper again being overshadowed by the other brands today 7 Up is just one of many beverages owned by that company I wouldn't say they stand out in any major way certainly not like they used to in fact they have been declining for so long that I would bet that most of the people watching this probably had no idea that 7 Up used to be such a big deal let me know in the comments did you know that 7 Up used to be such a big deal I think it's a great story but kind of a depressing one well obviously if you're a big seven up Drinker this hasn't been the easiest 10 or so minutes for you to watch but also it demonstrates how larger companies can push smaller ones right out of the market do you ever drink Seven up or do you prefer one of the competing products and I also want to ask have you ever played the video game from the 1990s where you play as their mascot at the time named cool spot it's the Dot from the label brought to life they were always attempting to bring in a younger audience actually I do think that they are now part of a company that likely has the ability to revive the brand to an extent but is it even worth trying it at this point it's been so long and I don't know if the demand is really there just more things to think about so any thoughts you have about seven up or anything else in this video leave them in the comments I'd like to hear what you have to say thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Company Man

Views: 635,952

Keywords: 7 Up, Soda, Company, Business, Decline, Beverage

Id: PT0JDaYq3js

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023