BevBlog

When I first heard that Coke would be releasing a slew of “catch up” products, I had high hopes that Coke might flex its muscle and produce some interesting and innovated products. What they actually produced was Full Throttle, Gold Peak, Blak, and Godiva Belgian Blends. How do these products stack up? Full Throttle is good, probably the best thing Coke’s come up with recently and it definitely has a shot. Coke Blak is blah; coffee cola didn’t work 7 years ago and it won’t last now. Gold Peak is just plain bad. And Godiva Belgian Blends won’t make a dent in the Starbuck’s Frappuccino empire.

Coke seems to have missed out on the advantages of NOT being first to market. Especially important if you’re playing “catch up”, Coke should be striving to finish with a leg up on the competition (Pepsi, Red Bull, Snapple, Starbucks, etc). After all, Coke has had plenty of time — in some cases years — to look at the leaders in tea, energy, and coffee and see what has worked and what hasn’t. Unfortunately though, few of these new products offer anything that can’t be found elsewhere in a more superior form.

It’s anyone’s guess as to what caused this….Bad corporate culture stifling innovation? Too many focus groups creating products for the least common denominator? Lack of R&D talent?

Feel free to post your take…

Hey, so we got a great request this morning regarding Pepsi Jazz — it seems that WBGO, the excellent jazz station out of Newark, NJ, seems to think it’s a natural for sponsorship. We agree, not because we like the product any more than any other, but gosh sakes, we do like BGO. So what about it, guys?

The August 7th Business Week has a great profile of Mary Minnick, Coca Cola’s head of marketing, strategy, and innovation. Aside from giving historical detail of some of Coke’s missed opportunities during Minnick’s tenure at Coke, it provides some great insight into one person’s crusade to save Coke from being “irrelevant”.

Her goal, according to the article, is “to transform Coke from a soda-centric organization that was long content to offer ‘me-too’ products in emerging categories to one on the cutting edge of consumer trends.” These intentions sound great — just what Coke needs — but the article doesn’t reveal much about how this will be executed and I personally find it worrisome that Coca-Cola Zero and Coke Blak are referenced as examples of the transformation.

Surprisingly, the article lacks any mention of acquisition. Realistically, the change that Minnick is hoping to achieve is so fundamental that it’s difficult to believe that it can happen organically. Coke — and Minnick, if she wishes to last in such a position — needs to find brands or companies that can bring outside innovation to an organization that has struggled to come up with fresh ideas of its own. Whether it ends up being in the form of something the size of Glaceau or several smaller companies in emerging categories, Minnick needs to help Coke learn what it means to be an innovator.

Read the full article:
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/brand06_article2.html