As the market landscape of consumers continues to shift, Coca-Cola moved to compromise with its iconic secret formula. It tinkered with it in an attempt to "make" the taste of its customers evolve with their shifting tastes. But what ensued was not exactly the opposite of that: the sales and the customers moved inversely. How is the balance between loyalty to the brand and innovation? How does life go when that trust is breached?

"Change is sometimes not what the consumer wants, even if it's good for them."

Emotional Bond with Brands

Coca-Cola is a beverage and, at the same time, part of history, culture, and nostalgia. For more than one hundred years, the company has possessed a classic formula, and generations of consumers have attached an emotional bond to the product. Coca-Cola underestimated the emotional bond that consumers had when they experimented with the original taste of the beverage. Most of them did not bother with an "improved" taste. They thought the original was already good enough, and any change appeared to be an invasion. By destroying this emotional link, Coca-Cola lost a large number of its devoted followers.

"The customer is no longer a consumer of only goods; he buys memories and feelings associated with the product." "

The Reason for Tradition in Branding

Trust and consistency constitute the root of brand loyalty. Coca-Cola had decades of building up its brand image as reliable, familiar, and safe. Changing something as fundamentally important as the taste of this drink, even in good faith, was something that broke the trust building over several decades. It teaches them a hard lesson to the brands: innovation must always come paired with tradition.Public outcry after the modification in the flavor surfaced quickly and strongly. It was soon reversed when Coca-Cola finally learned its mistake, renaming the original formula "Coca-Cola Classic." This move allowed them to safely inform their customers that the favorite drink that had been around for decades was back for good.