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New Coke II? No, but...

Comparisons to the new Coke fiasco have been common since the start of the effort to restore the previous Diet Mountain Dew formula. It's an easy and natural jump to make: similar players, similar execution, and in some ways, similar discontent. However, in my view there are two key differences, one of which I'm confident PepsiCo considered and the other of which I'm equally confident they didn't.

Coca-Cola was, and is, an icon of Western culture. Diet Mountain Dew...isn't. Coca-Cola is more than a soft drink; it's part of a gestalt, born in the 20th century, that pervades everything from top-down motoring on Route 66 to the most popularized image of Santa Claus. Diet Mountain Dew...isn't. The visceral negative reaction to new Coke had something to do with how the product tasted, but perceived damage to the American consumer's way of life is what made it an ongoing international news story and one of the most grievous marketing errors ever. It was as if McDonald's had gone vegan, or General Motors had sold the Chevrolet division to Peugeot.

Friends, this ain't that. Diet Mountain Dew really is just a soft drink. There will never be ice-skating Diet Mountain Dew polar bears, and there will never be a Diet Mountain Dew clothing line, and there will never be an iconic Diet Mountain Dew Christmas commercial with a bunch of shaggy beatniks on a hillside singing about teaching us to do it too.

Perhaps it's Diet Dew's lack of icon status that partially emboldened PepsiCo to change it. "Not like we're messing with our flagship brand," some mid-level drone might have chortled, proud of himself for having said something sound-bitish in front of his boss. Whatever the groupthink was, and whatever comparisons were made to new Coke, PepsiCo missed something big in their analysis. The inherent difference between a diet soft drink and a regular soft drink is that a diet drink is non-caloric. That has a large, direct effect on the amount of the product that can be practically consumed. If I drank Coca-Cola in the same quantity that I drank Diet Mountain Dew, I'd be adding nearly 3,000 calories daily to my intake. Now somebody somewhere may drink that much Coca-Cola regularly, but that is clearly not the habit of an ordinary Coca-Cola consumer.

Contrast the Diet Mountain Dew drinker. I drank 2 to 4 liters daily for 19 years. I have scores, maybe by now even hundreds, of email and petition reports that tell me that's on the low side. Obviously this is anecdotal, but anecdotes acquire gravity as quantity increases.

I don't know how many Diet Dew drinkers there are, but there must be far less of us than Coca-Cola drinkers. However, we drink much more per person, and as I've said in other pieces on this site, PepsiCo probably either didn't know that or underestimated it badly. So what if the Diet Mountain Dew customer base is only 10% that of the Coca-Cola customer base, but the typical Diet Mountain Dew consumer drinks 500% as much of the respective product? It's a sneak attack on the balance sheet. I believe that PepsiCo will examine their first post-Tuned Up Taste sales reports and discover hemorrhaging possibly half as severe as what Coca-Cola experienced 20 years ago. Alienating one loyal Diet Mountain Dew customer could easily be comparable to alienating five loyal Coca-Cola customers.

We continue to prominently demonstrate ample market for the previous formula. Petition signatures continue to accumulate healthily. I received email this week from a woman who is "doing (her) part, calling every morning...the operators are not nearly as friendly as they were two weeks ago." Bravo. Thank you, ma'am. PepsiCo ends the madness immediately with the introduction of Diet Mountain Dew Classic. With a backdrop of a fancy PowerPoint showing Diet Dew sales off a cliff and still in freefall, Mr. Cooper, Ms. Hudson, or Mr. Carey will make precisely that call.

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