Coca-Cola Company is “Blase” About the Mentos Experiment

The recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that the marketing gurus at the Coca-Cola Company are not all that excited about the pop culture phenomenon. “It’s an entertaining phenomenon,” said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. “We would hope people want to drink (Diet Coke) more than try experiments with it.” According to the article, Coke could use some extra buzz right now. Sales volume of Diet Coke in the U.S. was essentially flat last year, as consumers switch from diet sodas to bottled water and other noncarbonated drinks. But McDermott says that the “craziness with Mentos … doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Diet Coke.

If the truth be known, both Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke work much better than generic sodas. In the original video posted on 9News.com, both name brand diet sodas were used just so we wouldn’t get in trouble by favoring one over the other. But when VH1 included the video on the second episode of Web Junk 20, the bloggers started calling it the “Diet Coke-Mentos Experiment”.

8 replies
  1. Steve
    Steve says:

    Here’s an interesting follow-up to the Wall Street Journal article on Coca-Cola’s response…
    http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06061218.htm

    The author of the article (Rich Smith) writes, “Now, it’s no surprise that mighty Coke, with its $2 billion-per-annum advertising budget, isn’t as thrilled as Perfetti is with the pop-goes-the-geyser phenomenon. Ten mil in free advertising or no, the exploding-soda phenomenon may hit a bit close to home. Back in the ’80s, both Coke and Kraft (NYSE: KFT) subsidiary General Foods suffered at the hands of a disturbingly similar urban legend. Supposedly, General Food’s Pop Rocks, combined with a glass of Coke, made Quaker Oats (now PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP)) poster boy Mikey’s head explode.”

    Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] thrilled with the idea of associating themselves with the video. Coca-Cola specifically distanced itself from the phenomenon initially. Mentos took some time, but quickly embraced the phenomenon, agreeing […]

  2. […] thrilled with the idea of associating themselves with the video. Coca-Cola specifically distanced itself from the phenomenon initially. Mentos took some time, but quickly embraced the phenomenon, agreeing […]

  3. […] thrilled with the idea of associating themselves with the video. Coca-Cola specifically distanced itself from the phenomenon initially. Mentos took some time, but quickly embraced the phenomenon, agreeing […]

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *