So the mighty Coca-Cola has gobbled up Costa Coffee in a £3.9bn deal. Wow. News reports say it’s a win-win good news for Costa as the brand can expand further globally and good for Coke as it takes them into hot beverages.
For what it’s worth, I am personally rather pleased. I never drink coffee I just don’t like the stuff but I do go into Costa with people who like coffee. At present, in the way of cola, Costa offers Pepsi, Pepsi Max etc, which is not my favourite brand so I’m presuming Costa will switch to Coca-Cola and Diet Coke instead.
In the meantime, Coca-Cola is busy here bringing in a new design featuring the ’iconic red’ more prominently across Coca-Cola classic (now called ’original taste’ for some reason) and zero sugar. Classic red coke has Original Taste written in white at the top of the can while Zero has the words ’Zero Sugar. No Calories’ written in white on a black background on the top of the can.
The official press release states: "The changes unify both variants with the iconic Coca-Cola red and form part of the company’s commercial strategy to encourage more people to try Coca-Cola zero sugar".
To me that means, we expect some people to see the predominantly red can and pick up zero sugar by mistake.
The people at Coke say that for more than 130 years, the colour red has been associated with the ’great taste and experience of enjoying a Coca-Cola’ and they want to make it even clearer that people can have that taste and experience with or without sugar. The trouble is Zero doesn’t taste exactly like original Coke and it never will without the sugar.
I know that every time one of the daily newspapers talks about sugar in soft drinks, they wheel out stats about the sugar in a can of Red Coke but surely Coca-Cola should just own the fact that they make a very good, extremely popular drink that many people enjoy. No, you shouldn’t guzzle gallons of it but everything in moderation. So I just wish they’d stop meddling and let people decide.
There’s no mention of Diet Coke so I am presuming that’s staying in silver cans for the moment at least.
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