Spectre Brands

DeadFruity, cola-colored soda · Atlanta, Georgia

OK Soda

Introduced Apr 20, 1994. On sale in test markets from May 1994. Phase-out reported Sep 13, 1995.

The slogan was “Things are going to be OK.” For the people who called the hotline, perhaps. For the soda, no.

Why dead: Coca-Cola said in September 1995 that it would phase the drink out of its test markets; its US registration of the OK soft drink trademark was cancelled in 2003, and we found no drink sold under the name since.911

SODA 12 FL OZ fine.
Original illustration of a soda can with a blank face. Not an official asset; the face, the label and the lettering are our own drawing, not the artwork on the real cans.

OK Soda was a reddish-brown, fruity soft drink that Coca-Cola aimed at 12- to 25-year-olds in 1994, with drab cans drawn by alternative cartoonists, chain letters in the mail and a toll-free number that played back callers’ complaints. Coca-Cola hoped it would become a mainstream brand, and the press reported a target of 3 to 4% of the market. It was sold in eight or nine US cities, depending on the source, and was withdrawn after a little more than a million cases. Coca-Cola’s SEC filings mention it once, in a list of products, so this post-mortem is built mostly from the newspapers and magazines of the time. It has fewer numbers than most pages on this site, and says where the record stops.

The product in four numbers

1M+
cases sold between its introduction and September 1995, according to a Coca-Cola spokesman9
9
US test cities “from Boston to Seattle,” as Time counted them in May 1994; The Washington Post counted eight68
3–4%
of the soft drink market: the target reported by The Washington Post in September 19948
1M+
calls to the 1-800-I-FEEL-OK line by September 1994, according to Coca-Cola8

Key findings

  1. The brand came before the drink. Advertising Age reported five days after the announcement that Coca-Cola would bring to market “a new brand that’s admittedly not fully formed.”5 The Believer later reported that the ads were grey partly because the color of the liquid had not been decided.13
  2. The campaign was the part that worked. Coca-Cola said the hotline had taken more than a million calls within about four months, from a product on sale in a handful of cities.8
  3. The taste was the part that did not. The first four people a Washington Post reporter asked in Minneapolis each compared it to a “suicide,” every soda fountain flavor in one cup. A nine-store supermarket chain there sold at most ten 12-packs a week.8
  4. It was judged as a mainstream brand. The target was 3 to 4% of the market, about the size of Mountain Dew.86 What it delivered was a little over a million cases, which a spokesman said was not “the type of profitable volume we needed.”9
  5. Nobody has brought it back. The trademark registration issued in 1997, after the drink was gone, and was cancelled in 2003.11 We found no re-release.

Post-mortem No. 028 · Every figure links to a numbered source · Derived figures, estimates and unverified claims are labeled

Context

The year everyone tried to sell to Generation X

OK arrived in a soft drink market that had stopped growing and a youth market that large companies were studying closely.

A slow market and a crowd of small rivals

The New York Times described the American carbonated-beverage market in April 1994 as “lackluster,” and read OK as a move against the independent brands in “the growing market for alternative beverages.”4 Time quoted the editor of Beverage World: Coke and Pepsi had traditionally let smaller companies innovate, and “now Coke is becoming an innovator too.”6

Coca-Cola launched Fruitopia the same year as a rival to Snapple, and a Sprite campaign, “Obey Your Thirst,” that Time said “pointedly refuses to overpromise.”136 A year earlier its product list had included Tab Clear, its clear cola from the year of Crystal Pepsi; by the 1994 report that was gone.21

The audience, as Time counted it in May 1994
27.8Mteenagers in the United States6
$89Bspent by American adolescents the previous year, “as much as”6
$3B+of their own money spent on soft drinks alone6
2 to 1Coca-Cola’s lead over Pepsi in soft drink sales around the world, “more than”6
John Greenwald, Time, May 30, 1994.6 Time does not give its source for the spending figures.

People who are 19 years old are very accustomed to having been manipulated and knowing that they’re manipulated.

Tom Pirko, Bevmark, on NPR’s All Things Considered, May 27, 19947

The story

A soda for people who did not believe in soda commercials

OK Soda is remembered for its cans, its hotline and its manifesto. It is rarely remembered for how it tasted, which is most of the explanation for what happened to it.

Chapter 1 of 6

12–25

the age range Coca-Cola said the drink was aimed at, “particularly young men”

SODA 12 FL OZ fine.
The cans were black, grey and red, with deadpan faces. Time compared them to post-office wanted pictures.6 Original illustration, not the real artwork.

Aug 1993 – Apr 1994 · The brief

The second-best-known word in the world

Sergio Zyman had been senior vice president of marketing for Coca-Cola USA until 1986. After seven years as a consultant he came back in August 1993 as the company’s chief marketing officer.1 The essayist Michael Schulman later described the rehiring as a surprise, since Zyman’s “last brainstorm” had been New Coke.13

Coca-Cola said its understanding of teenagers rested on years of study, including a two-year “Global Teenager” program that employed graduate students from MIT, and on a year of field research for this product. The research described a generation with, in Time’s paraphrase, “an acute sense of diminished expectations.”6 The company also had a gap to fill: Pepsi’s Mountain Dew held 3.5% of the US soft drink market, and Coca-Cola’s citrus brand Mello Yello held 0.3%.6

The name came from a claim Coca-Cola repeated to reporters: that O.K. is the most widely recognized expression in the world, and Coca-Cola the second.678 The company already owned the word for soft drinks: a US trademark registration for OK, issued in 1978, is listed in the Patent and Trademark Office’s records under Coca-Cola’s name, and the 1994 application claimed it.1211

It underpromises. It doesn’t say, ‘This is the next great thing.’

Brian Lanahan, manager of special projects, Coca-Cola marketing, in Time, May 30, 19946

Chapter 2 of 6

50+

can designs shown to focus groups before Coca-Cola decided to use four

Four grey and silver OK Soda cans side by side, each with a red-bordered OK box and black line drawings of faces
The four original can designs, photographed in 2006. Photo: TeemPlayer, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.21

Apr – May 1994 · The launch

Four cans, because the focus groups could not pick one

Coca-Cola introduced OK at a news conference in New York on April 20, 1994. The New York Times called it “a cola-colored, full-calorie soda” and a gambit against the independent brands in “the growing market for alternative beverages.” The company said the taste defied categorization. Reporters who tried it detected “a slight orange or citrus flavor.”4 The agency was Wieden & Kennedy of Portland, Oregon, known for its Nike advertising.4

Five days later Advertising Age reported that Coca-Cola, “in its rush to develop new products,” would within 30 days bring to market “a new brand that’s admittedly not fully formed.”5 The trademark record gives May 6, 1994 as the date of first use in commerce.11

By late May the drink was on sale in what Time counted as nine cities “from Boston to Seattle.” NPR named Austin, Denver, Minneapolis–St. Paul and Seattle.67 There were four can designs, chosen after focus groups failed to agree on one out of more than 50. The artwork came from alternative cartoonists, among them Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns.68 Time reported that Coca-Cola planned to roll the drink out across the United States that summer and take it abroad by the end of the year.6

Chapter 3 of 6

1M+

calls to the hotline by September 1994, according to Coca-Cola

Commercial · 1994The hotline: “Thanks for being a devoted caller” A short recording that the uploader presents as audio from the 1-800-I-FEEL-OK line, posted in September 2014. The year is our attribution from the period the line operated; we could not confirm when the recording was made.228 Watch on YouTube

May – Sep 1994 · The campaign

1-800-I-FEEL-OK

The advertising did not show anyone drinking anything. It began with chain letters, mailed in the test markets about two weeks before the television and print ads, telling recipients to show the letter “to six close friends.”6 Cans and posters carried numbered “coincidences,” short tales about people who had or had not drunk OK, and lines from a ten-point manifesto.813

The center of it was a toll-free number. Callers could hear recorded messages, take a true-or-false “OK Personality Inventory,” or leave a message of their own. Time reported that Coca-Cola had paid its agency to plant a hostile one, from a “Pam H.” who resented being told that everything would be O.K.6 Real callers were less scripted. One said: “this stuff tastes like crap.”6 Another called it “carbonated tree sap,” and the agency put the phrase in the ads.8

By early September Coca-Cola said the line had taken more than a million calls, from a product sold in a handful of cities.8 Mark Pendergrast, as quoted in The Believer, wrote that kids called “just to see what happened.”13

The most important thing is advertising.

Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, on what makes people choose a soft drink, NPR’s All Things Considered, May 27, 19947

Chapter 4 of 6

10

12-packs a week, at most, sold by a nine-store Twin Cities supermarket chain

all of them
Drinkers in Minneapolis independently compared the taste to every fountain flavor in one cup.8 Original illustration.

Summer 1994 · The drink

“The first one tastes good, but you don’t want a second”

Coca-Cola told Time the flavor came from the observation that teenagers drink everything from colas to lemon-lime, so it blended those tastes into one reddish-brown soda.6 On NPR a consultant who had worked for both Coke and Pepsi described it as “a little bit like going to a fountain and mixing a little bit of Coke with a little root beer and Dr. Pepper and maybe throwing in some orange.”7

In Minneapolis, The Washington Post found that drinkers had reached the same comparison on their own. Each of the first four people the reporter interviewed said it tasted like a “suicide,” the mix you get by pressing every button on a self-serve dispenser.8 In a focus group there in May, the 15-to-17-year-olds “eventually warmed up” to it and the 18-to-20-year-olds “never warmed up at all.” Both groups loved the 800 number.6

By the start of September the Post reported “dismal sales” in the Twin Cities. One store clerk said Coke’s distributor had pulled the product from the shelves. The manager of another store said he had not sold a single 12-pack. Coca-Cola declined to comment on sales, and the hotline told callers its services were paused until September 12 “for purely arbitrary reasons.”8

We sell at most 10 12-packs a week, maybe, and 20 liter bottles, which is our most popular size. Overall, I’d say it’s not doing great.

Paul Ruhme, grocery manager of Byerly’s, The Washington Post, Sep 3, 19948

Chapter 5 of 6

1M

cases sold, a little more, before the phase-out

Commercial · 1994OK Soda broadcast ads A two-and-a-half-minute reel of television spots, titled “OK Soda Broadcast Ads, 1994” by the uploader and posted in June 2014.22 The Believer describes the format: a voice reading a chain letter as typewriter text scrolls over a black background.13 Watch on YouTube

Sep 1994 – Sep 1995 · The end

“Not the type of profitable volume we needed”

The national rollout that Time had described for the summer of 1994 did not happen, and neither, as far as we could find, did the launch in four other countries that Coca-Cola had announced.68 The company’s annual report on Form 10-K for 1994 lists “OK soda” once, between caffeine free TAB and Fresca, in a sentence naming its soft drink products. It says nothing else about it.1

On September 13, 1995 The New York Times carried a four-sentence item from Atlanta under the headline “Phasing Out a Soda.” A spokesman, Randy Donaldson, said Coca-Cola had sold more than one million cases since the drink’s introduction and that this was not enough.9 The next 10-K’s product list does not include it.3

Coca-Cola spent $1,308 million on advertising in 1994, up from $1,126 million the year before.1 What share of that went to OK was never disclosed.

We just didn’t generate the type of profitable volume we needed with OK, so we decided not to continue it in those test markets.

Randy Donaldson, Coca-Cola spokesman, The New York Times, Sep 13, 19959

Chapter 6 of 6

2003

the year the US trademark registration was cancelled

Documentary · 2024Slate’s Decoder Ring: “The Gen X Soda That Was Just ‘OK’” A 43-minute episode of Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast about the brand, posted on Slate’s channel in February 2024.22 A later retelling, not a period source; nothing on this page is cited to it. Watch on YouTube

1997 – 2026 · The afterlife

The product died. The brand lived on.

The trademark outlasted the drink on paper. Coca-Cola’s application for the red-boxed OK mark was still pending when the phase-out was announced. It was registered in March 1997 and cancelled in December 2003, when no declaration of continued use was filed.11

In 1997 Time used OK as its example of how marketers had misread Generation X: “The nine-city campaign fizzled.”10 The cartoonist Daniel Clowes said in 2010 that the eyes on his can were Charles Manson’s, and that there was by then “a whole cult devoted to OK.”14 In 2014 The Believer found old poster art selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and asked Peter Wegner, who wrote the manifesto, what had gone wrong.13

His answer is the shortest account of the brand there is: people did not want to consume the drink, and very much wanted to consume the brand.13 We found no revival of either.

So the product died. The brand lived on.

Peter Wegner, associate creative director on the campaign, in The Believer, Feb 201413

Timeline

Fifty-one years of a two-letter trademark, 29 moments

From an old registration to a cancelled one, with about sixteen months of soda in between. Filter by thread.

All 29 events as a list
  1. Feb 211975
    Coca-Cola

    OK is first used on soft drinks

    The date of first use in commerce given in a US trademark registration for OK for soft drinks, listed under Coca-Cola’s name. We do not know what product it was used on.12

  2. Jun 201978
    Coca-Cola

    The first OK registration

    Registration No. 1,093,933 is issued. Coca-Cola’s 1994 application claims ownership of it.1112

  3. 19861986
    Coca-Cola

    Sergio Zyman leaves

    He had been senior vice president of marketing for Coca-Cola USA. The Believer later calls New Coke his “last brainstorm.”113

  4. Aug 19931993
    Coca-Cola

    Zyman returns as chief marketing officer

    After seven years as a consultant, according to Coca-Cola’s annual report on Form 10-K.1

  5. 1993 – 1994
    Product

    A year of field study

    Coca-Cola says the campaign was tuned during a year of research among teenagers, on top of a two-year “Global Teenager” program with MIT graduate students.6

  6. Early 19941994
    Marketing

    “Obey Your Thirst”

    Coca-Cola launches a Sprite campaign that, in Time’s words, “pointedly refuses to overpromise.” Fruitopia is introduced the same year.613

  7. Apr 1
    Coca-Cola

    First new trademark application

    Coca-Cola files to register OK for soft drinks, syrups and concentrates. It abandons this application, and a second one filed June 27, on February 3, 1995.23

  8. Apr 20
    Product

    Introduced in New York

    Zyman presents “a cola-colored, full-calorie soda” for 12- to 25-year-olds. Reporters taste “a slight orange or citrus flavor.”4

  9. Apr 25
    Press

    “Admittedly not fully formed”

    Advertising Age reports the brand will reach the market within 30 days.5

  10. May 6
    Product

    First sale

    The date of first use in commerce in the trademark record. The Washington Post later says the drink had been test-marketed “since May.”118

  11. Mid-May
    Marketing

    Chain letters in the mail

    Coca-Cola mails letters in its target markets telling recipients to show them “to six close friends.” Dated from Time’s “two weeks ago.”6

  12. May 1994
    Product

    A cool focus group

    In Minneapolis, 15-to-17-year-olds eventually warm to the taste. The 18-to-20-year-olds never do. Both groups keep calling the 800 number.6

  13. May 27
    Press

    NPR: “Who cares?”

    On All Things Considered, consultant Tom Pirko says taste falls “way down in the hierarchy” of why people choose a soft drink. The drink is on sale in Austin, Denver, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Seattle “and a few other cities.”7

  14. May 30
    Press

    Time: “Will Teens Buy It?”

    Nine test cities, four can designs chosen from more than 50, print and TV ads starting that week, and a plan to go national in the summer and abroad by year-end.6

  15. Aug 10
    Coca-Cola

    The application that sticks

    Coca-Cola files for the red-boxed OK mark, claiming first use on May 6.11

  16. Sep 3
    Decline

    “Dismal sales” in Minneapolis

    The Washington Post finds a store that has not sold one 12-pack and another where the distributor has pulled the product. Coca-Cola says the hotline has taken more than a million calls and announces plans for four other countries.8

  17. Sep 12
    Marketing

    The hotline’s scheduled return

    Callers in early September are told the interactive services are paused until this date “for purely arbitrary reasons.” We could not confirm what happened on it.8

  18. Mar 131995
    Coca-Cola

    One mention in the 10-K

    Coca-Cola’s annual report for 1994 lists “OK soda” among its soft drink products. Advertising for the whole company was $1,308 million.1

  19. Sep 5
    Coca-Cola

    Trademark published for opposition

    A routine step in the registration, one week before the end.11

  20. Sep 11
    Decline

    “We decided not to continue it”

    Spokesman Randy Donaldson says Coca-Cola has sold more than one million cases and will phase the drink out of its test markets. The Times dates his remarks to “Monday.”9

  21. Sep 13
    Decline

    “Phasing Out a Soda”

    The New York Times prints the news in four sentences.9

  22. Mar 141996
    Coca-Cola

    Gone from the list

    The 10-K for 1995 names Coca-Cola’s soft drinks without OK. Barq’s, bought that year, is new.3

  23. Mar 181997
    Afterlife

    Registered, eighteen months late

    The Patent and Trademark Office registers the OK mark to Coca-Cola after a concurrent-use proceeding.11

  24. Jun 9
    Press

    “The nine-city campaign fizzled”

    Time cites OK in a feature on how marketers misjudged Generation X.10

  25. Mar 301999
    Afterlife

    The 1978 registration expires

    It was not renewed.12

  26. Dec 202003
    Afterlife

    The 1997 registration is cancelled

    No declaration of continued use was filed. Fruitopia is phased out in the United States the same year.1120

  27. Spring 20102010
    Afterlife

    “The cans are quite valuable”

    Daniel Clowes tells Mother Jones the eyes on his can were Charles Manson’s. Time puts OK in its “Top 10 Bad Beverage Ideas.”1415

  28. Feb 20142014
    Afterlife

    The Believer’s long look back

    Michael Schulman interviews the campaign’s creators twenty years on.13

  29. Oct 20262026
    Afterlife

    Still gone

    Both registrations show as dead in the USPTO’s database when checked on October 8, 2026. We found no re-release.1112

Part 2 of 6

Business

The numbers · Marketing · Rivals

The numbers

A million calls, a million cases and a target nobody put in writing

Coca-Cola never published a sales figure for OK in a filing. What exists is one sentence from a spokesman, a target reported by newspapers, a few counts from the campaign and the company-wide advertising line in the 10-K. This section keeps them apart.

Four figures, four kinds of source

1M+
A spokesman’s figure. Cases sold from introduction to September 1995, as given to The New York Times.9 The only sales number Coca-Cola ever gave.
3–4%
A press report of the target. The Washington Post said OK’s purpose was to take 3 to 4% of a $50 billion soft drink market, which “would make it the most successful new soda in a dozen years.”8
1M+
A company claim. Calls to the 800 line by early September 1994, “despite the limits of the test markets.”8
1
Mentions in Coca-Cola’s annual reports on Form 10-K: the words “OK soda” in a list of products for 1994. None for 1993 or 1995.123

Sixteen months in test

Number of US test cities reported in the press. The count comes from two different publications and is not a company figure.

02.557.510Aug 1993Apr 1994May 1994Sep 1994Late 1995123450510Aug 1993Apr 1994May 1994Sep 1994Late 199512345
  1. Aug 1993 · Zyman returns Sergio Zyman rejoins Coca-Cola as chief marketing officer.1 No product yet.
  2. Apr 1994 · announced Introduced to the press on April 20; not yet on sale.4
  3. May 1994 · nine cities Time’s count, “from Boston to Seattle,” with a national rollout planned for the summer.6
  4. Sep 1994 · eight cities The Washington Post’s count, with “dismal sales” in Minneapolis.8 We do not know whether a city was dropped or the counts simply differ.
  5. Late 1995 · phased out Withdrawn from “those test markets.”9 Plotted as zero; the date the last cans were sold is unknown.
Data table
Sixteen months in test
Test cities reportedTest cities
Aug 19930
Apr 19940
May 19949
Sep 19948
Late 19950
Time, May 30, 19946; The Washington Post, Sep 3, 19948; The New York Times, Sep 13, 19959; Coca-Cola Form 10-K for 19941. The zeros are plotting conventions. Later lists of test markets name more places than nine; we could not trace them to a period source.

The share Coca-Cola wanted, and the brands on either side of it

Percent of the US soft drink market in 1994, as stated in the press. OK’s own share was never published.

OK: reported target, upper end
4%
“3 to 4 percent” in The Washington Post; 4% and $1 billion in The Believer’s later account.813
Mountain Dew (Pepsi)
3.5%
The most popular soda aimed at teenagers, per Time.6
OK: reported target, lower end
3%
The Washington Post.8
Mello Yello (Coca-Cola)
0.3%
Coke’s existing citrus brand, per Time.6
Data table
The share Coca-Cola wanted, and the brands on either side of it
Brand or targetShare of soft drink marketNote
OK: reported target, upper end4%“3 to 4 percent” in The Washington Post; 4% and $1 billion in The Believer’s later account.
Mountain Dew (Pepsi)3.5%The most popular soda aimed at teenagers, per Time.
OK: reported target, lower end3%The Washington Post.
Mello Yello (Coca-Cola)0.3%Coke’s existing citrus brand, per Time.
Time, May 30, 19946; The Washington Post, Sep 3, 19948; The Believer, Feb 201413. The Post describes the $50 billion market as worldwide; the other sources describe a US share. Figures are shown side by side for scale only.

The gap OK was meant to close

3.5%Mountain Dew’s share of the US soft drink market, 19946
=
12 ×Mello Yello’s share (0.3%)

Derived 3.5 ÷ 0.3 ≈ 11.7, shown as 12 bottles. Both shares are from Time, May 30, 1994.6

Data table
The gap OK was meant to close
Value
Mountain Dew’s share of the US soft drink market, 19943.5%
Mello Yello’s share0.3%
Ratio12 (derived)
Time, May 30, 1994.6

The budget it came out of

The Coca-Cola Company’s advertising expenditures, all brands, worldwide. OK’s share of this was never disclosed.

Data table
The budget it came out of
PeriodAdvertising expenditures ($M)
1992$1107M
1993$1126M
1994$1308M
The Coca-Cola Company, Form 10-K for 1994: “Advertising expenditures were $1,308 million in 1994, $1,126 million in 1993 and $1,107 million in 1992.”1 The increase from 1993 to 1994 is $182 million, or about 16% (derived). Nothing in the filing attributes any of it to OK.

What Coca-Cola told its shareholders

The soft drink product list in three consecutive annual reports on Form 10-K.

Report forFiledWhat the list says
1993Mar 14, 1994Includes “TAB Clear.” No OK.2
1994Mar 13, 1995“…TAB, caffeine free TAB, OK soda, Fresca, PowerAde, Fruitopia…” TAB Clear is gone.1
1995Mar 14, 1996No OK. Fruitopia remains; Barq’s root beer is added.3
Small numbers from the test
1012-packs a week, at most, at Byerly’s, a chain of nine Twin Cities supermarkets, plus about 20 liter bottles8
012-packs sold at one Minneapolis-area SuperAmerica store, according to its manager8
4countries outside the United States where Coca-Cola said it planned to introduce OK8
71,000cases a month, roughly: one million cases over about 14 months (derived, and it depends on which start date you use)9
The Washington Post, Sep 3, 19948; The New York Times, Sep 13, 1995.9

Unknown, because Coca-Cola did not publish them: OK’s sales in dollars, its market share in any city, what was spent on advertising it, the size of a “case” in the spokesman’s figure, and any write-off. The Times item says the drink was introduced in July 1994; every 1994 source we read has it on sale in May.

Marketing

The campaign was the product

Almost everything written about OK is about how it was sold. The methods were unusual for a soft drink in 1994: mail, a telephone line, text on a black screen, and a brand voice that mocked the claims brands make.

The campaign in numbers

1M+
calls to 1-800-I-FEEL-OK by September 1994, according to Coca-Cola8
50+
can designs put to focus groups; they could not agree, so four were used6
10
points in the OK manifesto, written by Peter Wegner of Wieden & Kennedy13
6
“close friends” each chain letter asked its recipient to show it to6
? true or false
Both of Coca-Cola’s Minneapolis focus groups kept calling the 800 number from the observation room.6 Original illustration.

A hotline that answered back

Callers could listen to other callers, leave a message or take the “OK Personality Inventory,” a true-or-false test read in what Time called “ironic tones.” A sample statement: “Sometimes people who feel OK don’t deserve it.”6 The Believer traces the test to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the hotline to an art project, Allan Bridge’s Apology Line.13

Callers were warned that their comments “may be used in advertising or exploited in some other way we haven’t figured out yet.”13 They were. “Carbonated tree sap” went from a voicemail into the ads.8

show six friends
Recipients could keep the chain going by mailing the letter or by showing it to six friends.6 Original illustration.

Chain letters, then chain letters on television

The letters went out about two weeks before the ads. They promised the usual rewards of a chain letter in the brand’s deadpan: a recipient in North Dakota who followed the instructions found within a month that he had “appeared on nationally syndicated talk shows as an unlikely sex symbol.”6

The television spots then read the letters aloud over scrolling typewriter text. A follow-up spot reported complaints from a group called Americans Mad About OK, which did not exist.13 Wegner told The Washington Post that critics were taking it too literally: “It’s a game. We’re just playing a more sophisticated game.”8

Commercial · 1994“OK Soda Commercials! All Of Them (I Think)” A five-minute compilation posted in September 2013 by Fizzled Out, a blog about discontinued sodas. The uploader’s own title admits it may not be complete.2218 Watch on YouTube

From the manifesto

Five of the ten points, as printed in The Believer. Several appeared on the cans.

No.Text
1What’s the point of OK? Well, what’s the point of anything?
4OK Soda says, “Don’t be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything.”
7There is no real secret to feeling OK.
9Never overestimate the remarkable abilities of “OK” brand soda.
10Please wake up every morning knowing that things are going to be OK.
Michael Schulman, The Believer, Feb 2014.13 Versions of points 1 and 4 are also quoted from the cans by Time in 1994 and 1997.610

Rivals

The shelf it was aimed at

OK was built to take share from the sodas teenagers already drank, above all Mountain Dew. Its closest relatives were Coca-Cola’s own experiments.

Six drinks from Coca-Cola’s and Pepsi’s 1993–1994 line-ups

What each was, and what became of it.

OK Soda

Dead
Aug 1993late 1995
1M+ cases Sold in test markets from May 1994; phased out from September 1995.9

Mountain Dew

Survived
3.5% Pepsi’s citrus soda and the most popular drink aimed at teenagers in 1994, by share of the US market.6

Mello Yello

Survived
0.3% Coca-Cola’s existing answer to Mountain Dew.6

Sprite

Survived
1994 Given a new campaign that year, “Obey Your Thirst,” which Time called highly successful.6

Fruitopia

Gone in the US
1994 Coca-Cola’s rival to Snapple, launched the same year.13 Phased out in the United States in 2003, by a later account.20

Tab Clear

Dead
1993 In Coca-Cola’s product list for 1993 and absent from the list for 1994.21
Data table
Six drinks from Coca-Cola’s and Pepsi’s 1993–1994 line-ups
CompanyOutcomeHeadline figureNotesSeries
OK SodaDead1M+ casesSold in test markets from May 1994; phased out from September 1995.0, 0, 9, 8, 0
Mountain DewSurvived3.5%Pepsi’s citrus soda and the most popular drink aimed at teenagers in 1994, by share of the US market.
Mello YelloSurvived0.3%Coca-Cola’s existing answer to Mountain Dew.
SpriteSurvived1994Given a new campaign that year, “Obey Your Thirst,” which Time called highly successful.
FruitopiaGone in the US1994Coca-Cola’s rival to Snapple, launched the same year. Phased out in the United States in 2003, by a later account.
Tab ClearDead1993In Coca-Cola’s product list for 1993 and absent from the list for 1994.
Time, May 30, 19946; The New York Times9; The Believer13; Coca-Cola Forms 10-K for 1993 and 199421; The Takeout20. The OK sparkline is the count of reported test cities from the numbers section.
Dead

OK Soda

Maker
The Coca-Cola Company
Announced
Apr 20, 19944
Sold in
Eight or nine US test cities68
Agency
Wieden & Kennedy4
Pitch
“Things are going to be OK”4
Reported goal
3 to 4% of the market8
Outcome
Phased out, September 19959
Gone in the US

Fruitopia

Maker
The Coca-Cola Company
Announced
199413
Sold in
Through the Coca-Cola bottler system1
Agency
Not in the sources we read
Pitch
Psychedelic graphics and “new-agey” flavor names13
Reported goal
A rival to Snapple13
Outcome
In the product list after OK left it; phased out in the US in 2003320
As cited in each row.

The same year, the opposite mood

The Believer sets the two launches side by side. Fruitopia “drew on the sunnier side of indie culture,” with kaleidoscopic fruit and flavors called Strawberry Passion Awareness, and “remained popular throughout the ’90s.” OK’s graphics came in “stoic grays and reds.”13 One advertising executive told Time in 1994 that teenagers had enough to be “bummed out about” and did not want to be reminded of it.6

Part 3 of 6

Brand

Commercials & footage · Brand gallery

Commercials & footage

Television chain letters

The broadcast ads, a recording from the hotline and a later documentary. These are collectors’ uploads; the 1994 dates are the uploaders’ and match the period the drink was on sale. Upload dates are from the YouTube pages.22

Commercial · 1994OK Soda broadcast ads A two-and-a-half-minute reel of television spots, titled “OK Soda Broadcast Ads, 1994” by the uploader and posted in June 2014.22 The Believer describes the format: a voice reading a chain letter as typewriter text scrolls over a black background.13 Watch on YouTube
Commercial · 1994The hotline: “Thanks for being a devoted caller” A short recording that the uploader presents as audio from the 1-800-I-FEEL-OK line, posted in September 2014. The year is our attribution from the period the line operated; we could not confirm when the recording was made.228 Watch on YouTube
Commercial · 1994A single 30-second spot Titled “1994 OK Soda Commercial” by the uploader and posted in May 2022. The date is the uploader’s.22 Watch on YouTube
Commercial · 1994“OK Soda Commercials! All Of Them (I Think)” A five-minute compilation posted in September 2013 by Fizzled Out, a blog about discontinued sodas. The uploader’s own title admits it may not be complete.2218 Watch on YouTube
Documentary · 2024Slate’s Decoder Ring: “The Gen X Soda That Was Just ‘OK’” A 43-minute episode of Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast about the brand, posted on Slate’s channel in February 2024.22 A later retelling, not a period source; nothing on this page is cited to it. Watch on YouTube

Videos are embedded from the services that host them and load only when you press play. YouTube embeds use youtube-nocookie.com. Each video belongs to its uploader or rights holder and is shown here for commentary; we do not host any of the files.

Part 4 of 6

People

People · Press

The people

Who ordered it, who wrote it, who drew it

Titles are as given in the sources cited. Later careers are included only where a source states them.

People (9)
Name and roleWhat they didAfterwards
Sergio ZymanSenior vice president and chief marketing officer, The Coca-Cola Company

Rejoined in August 1993 and introduced OK in New York the following April.14 The Believer reports that he predicted a billion dollars in sales and 4% of the market.13

Still listed as chief marketing officer in the 10-K filed in March 1996.3
Brian LanahanManager of special projects, Coca-Cola marketing

The company’s voice in Time’s 1994 report: “You have to first and foremost acknowledge that you are marketing.”6

Peter WegnerAssociate creative director, Wieden & Kennedy

Wrote the manifesto and the “coincidences.” He was 31, and defended the campaign in The Washington Post as a game.138

Left advertising; a multimedia artist in Berkeley, California, by 2014.13
Todd WaterburyWegner’s collaborator on the campaign, Wieden & Kennedy

The campaign’s “visual mastermind,” in The Believer’s phrase, who hired the cartoonists.13

Executive creative director at Target by 2014.13
Daniel ClowesCartoonist

Drew for the cans and gave his character Charles Manson’s eyes. He told The Believer the fee was more than he had made on his last five comics.1314

Published Ghost World. In 2010 he recalled the soda as “gone in two months,” which is shorter than the record shows.1314
Charles BurnsCartoonist

The other alternative cartoonist named in the 1994 coverage.8

Tom PirkoPresident, Bevmark

The consultant who described the taste on NPR and ranked taste below advertising, looks, availability and price.7

Randy DonaldsonSpokesman, The Coca-Cola Company

Announced the phase-out and gave the only sales figure.9

Roberto GoizuetaChief executive, The Coca-Cola Company

Rehired Zyman in 1993, according to The Believer.13

The clippings

What they said at the time

Press (9)
In its rush to develop new products, Coca-Cola Co. within the next 30 days will bring to market a new brand that’s admittedly not fully formed.
Marcy Magiera, Advertising Age, Apr 25, 19945
The first one tastes good, but you don’t want a second.
Darrin Billig, 20, Minneapolis, The Washington Post, Sep 3, 19948

  1. Brian Lanahan, Coca-Cola, Time, May 30, 19946

    It’s the flip side of overclaiming, which is what teens perceive a lot of brands do.

  2. Larry Jabbonsky, editor of Beverage World, Time, May 30, 19946

    Coke is trying to take it all.

  3. Tom Pirko, Bevmark, NPR, May 27, 19947

    I’m much less concerned with how the product tastes and a whole lot more concerned with the fact that it just has sort of major impact.

  4. Peter Wegner, Wieden & Kennedy, The Washington Post, Sep 3, 19948

    It’s a game. We’re just playing a more sophisticated game.

  5. Randy Donaldson, Coca-Cola, The New York Times, Sep 13, 19959

    We just didn’t generate the type of profitable volume we needed with OK, so we decided not to continue it in those test markets.

  6. Margot Hornblower, Time, Jun 9, 199710

    The nine-city campaign fizzled.

  7. Daniel Clowes, The Believer, Feb 201413

    I knew full well that what they were trying to do was not possible, that you could not market to cynical hipsters by being cynical and hipsterish.

Part 5 of 6

Verdict

Cause of death · What if · Afterlife

Cause of death

The autopsy

Tap a cause to see the evidence. The percentages are our editorial weighting. The evidence under each one is sourced.

Cause of death, by editorial weight

One square is one percentage point. The weights are our judgment, not a measurement.

  1. 30%The drink did not earn a second purchase
  2. 25%A brand launched before the product was finished
  3. 20%A mainstream target for a niche idea
  4. 15%The audience saw the pitch coming
  5. 10%Attention that did not turn into sales
Data table
Cause of death, by editorial weight
CauseWeight
The drink did not earn a second purchase30%
A brand launched before the product was finished25%
A mainstream target for a niche idea20%
The audience saw the pitch coming15%
Attention that did not turn into sales10%

Coca-Cola blended cola, lemon-lime and fruit flavors into one soda.6 The first four people a reporter asked in Minneapolis each compared it to every fountain flavor mixed in one cup, and a 20-year-old said: “The first one tastes good, but you don’t want a second.”8 In Coca-Cola’s own focus group the 18-to-20-year-olds “never warmed up at all.”6

Advertising Age reported the brand was “admittedly not fully formed” five days after it was announced.5 The Believer reports the color of the liquid was undecided while the campaign was being designed.13 A consultant close to the launch said on NPR that he was “much less concerned with how the product tastes.”7

Coca-Cola hoped the soda would “become mainstream enough to create new demand,” and the reported goal was 3 to 4% of the market, the size of Mountain Dew.486 It sold a little over a million cases in its test markets, which a spokesman said was not “the type of profitable volume we needed.”9

The press coverage was, in The Washington Post’s words, “unrelentingly negative,” and a Minneapolis weekly called the campaign “sadly duplicitous.”8 One of the cartoonists Coca-Cola hired said he knew “you could not market to cynical hipsters by being cynical and hipsterish.”13 Time concluded in 1997 that the early stereotypes of Generation X had been wrong.10

More than a million calls reached the hotline by September 1994, and both focus groups “loved the 800 number.”86 The same month, a nine-store supermarket chain was selling at most ten 12-packs a week.8 People wanted the phone line more than the can.

Editorial judgment: the weights are an interpretive model by the Spectre Brands editors, not a measured quantity. Coca-Cola published no sales breakdown for the brand and gave one sentence of explanation, so the evidence is the press of 1994–1995 and later interviews with the people who made the campaign. How much each cause contributed is a matter of opinion.

The fork in the road

What if…

Three decisions where the story could have gone differently. The “What if” panels are speculation, labeled as such.

What happened

The company said the taste defied categorization.4 Coca-Cola built it by blending the kinds of soda teenagers already drank.6 Todd Waterbury, who led the campaign’s design, said later that people kept asking what it tasted like, and that it might have sold better as a variant of a known flavor, “say, a cool root beer.”13

What if speculative

A root beer or a citrus soda in the same grey can would have answered the first question any shopper asks. It would also have been one more entrant against Mountain Dew, where Coca-Cola’s Mello Yello already had 0.3%.6 The packaging might have earned a first purchase either way; a familiar flavor is what would have had a chance at the second.

What happened

Coca-Cola hoped the drink would become mainstream, and the press reported a goal of 3 to 4% of the market.48 After a little over a million cases in a limited number of cities the company stopped, citing “profitable volume.”9 The Believer’s account lists impatience as one theory of the failure.13

What if speculative

Held to the standard of a small cult product, a million cases from eight or nine cities might have been a reason to keep going in the places where it sold. Whether there were such places is not known: no city-by-city figures were published, and the one city a newspaper looked at closely was selling almost none.

What happened

The campaign and the cans were developed while the product was still changing; Advertising Age called the brand “not fully formed” at launch.513 The test began about two weeks after the announcement.411 A focus group held after the drink was already on sale found the older half of the target unconvinced.6

What if speculative

A longer taste test before the announcement would have shown what Minneapolis showed in public. Coca-Cola could have changed the formula before the hotline, the chain letters and the magazine coverage spent the brand’s novelty. It would also have arrived later, into a market already crowded with drinks aimed at the same people.

Where is it now

The afterlife

OK Soda

  1. The name

    Lapsed

    Coca-Cola’s registration for the OK soft drink mark issued in March 1997 and was cancelled in December 2003 because no declaration of continued use was filed. The older 1978 registration expired in 1999.1112 We did not search for every OK mark Coca-Cola may hold; these are the two tied to the soda.

  2. The drink

    Gone

    Phased out of its test markets from September 1995.9 It was never sold nationally, and we found no re-release.

  3. The cans and posters

    Collected

    Daniel Clowes said in 2010 that the cans were “quite valuable.”14 The Believer found poster art selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay in 2014.13

  4. The makers

    Moved on

    Peter Wegner left advertising and became an artist. Todd Waterbury was executive creative director at Target by 2014.13 The Washington Post reported in 1994 that their agency had won the Microsoft account partly on the basis of Coca-Cola’s faith in it.8

  5. The hotline

    Unknown

    1-800-I-FEEL-OK was paused in early September 1994 with a promise to return on the 12th.8 We could not find when it was switched off.

  6. Fruitopia

    Outlived it, then went too

    Zyman’s other 1994 launch stayed in Coca-Cola’s product list after OK left it and was phased out in the United States in 2003, by a later account.320

  7. The idea

    Vindicated, in part

    Advertising that admits it is advertising is now ordinary, as later writers on OK point out.1817 Wegner’s verdict was that people wanted the brand and did not want the drink.13

One owner, two dead registrations

The name was never sold. Coca-Cola held it before the soda existed and let it go after.

  1. Jun 1978

    The Coca-Cola Company

    OK is registered for soft drinks, with first use in commerce given as February 1975.12

  2. Apr – Aug 1994

    The Coca-Cola Company

    Three new applications for OK. Two are abandoned in February 1995; the third, the red-boxed mark, proceeds.2311

  3. May 1994

    The Coca-Cola Company

    OK soda goes on sale in eight or nine US test cities.68

    1M+ cases
  4. Sep 1995

    The Coca-Cola Company

    The drink is phased out.9

  5. Mar 1997

    The Coca-Cola Company

    The 1994 application matures into a registration, eighteen months after the product ended.11

  6. Mar 1999

    The Coca-Cola Company

    The 1978 registration expires, not renewed.12

  7. Dec 2003

    The Coca-Cola Company

    The 1997 registration is cancelled.11

  8. Today

    No live registration that we found

    Both records were dead when checked on October 8, 2026. No drink is sold under the name.1112

Data table
One owner, two dead registrations
WhenOwnerWhat happenedPrice
Jun 1978The Coca-Cola CompanyOK is registered for soft drinks, with first use in commerce given as February 1975.
Apr – Aug 1994The Coca-Cola CompanyThree new applications for OK. Two are abandoned in February 1995; the third, the red-boxed mark, proceeds.
May 1994The Coca-Cola CompanyOK soda goes on sale in eight or nine US test cities.1M+ cases
Sep 1995The Coca-Cola CompanyThe drink is phased out.
Mar 1997The Coca-Cola CompanyThe 1994 application matures into a registration, eighteen months after the product ended.
Mar 1999The Coca-Cola CompanyThe 1978 registration expires, not renewed.
Dec 2003The Coca-Cola CompanyThe 1997 registration is cancelled.
TodayNo live registration that we foundBoth records were dead when checked on October 8, 2026. No drink is sold under the name.
US Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Status and Document Retrieval111223; Time6; The Washington Post8; The New York Times9.

Sources & data notes

Show your work

Coca-Cola’s filings on EDGAR and the trademark register first, then the newspapers and magazines of 1994–1995, then later reporting. The filings say almost nothing about OK, so most of this page rests on contemporary press, read in archived copies.

  1. The Coca-Cola Company, Form 10-K for fiscal 1994, filed Mar 13, 1995 (EDGAR, CIK 21344). Product list, executive officers and advertising expenditures.
  2. The Coca-Cola Company, Form 10-K for fiscal 1993, filed Mar 14, 1994. Product list.
  3. The Coca-Cola Company, Form 10-K for fiscal 1995, filed Mar 14, 1996. Product list and executive officers.
  4. The New York Times, “Company News; New Product, OK Soda, Is Introduced by Coca-Cola”, Apr 21, 1994 (archived copy).
  5. Marcy Magiera, “Come to Generation X: You’re OK, Drink OK”, Advertising Age, Apr 25, 1994. Paywalled: we could read the headline, byline, date and first sentence only, and cite it for nothing else.
  6. John Greenwald, “Will Teens Buy It?”, Time, May 30, 1994 (archived copy).
  7. National Public Radio, All Things Considered, “Coke Hopes to Sell New Drink on How it Feels not Tastes,” May 27, 1994. Transcript as reproduced on a fan site, archived by the Internet Archive in 2004. The transcript carries NPR’s notice that it was not proofread against the tape.
  8. David Brauer, “Playing With Our Food: Coca-Cola Puts X-’ers’ Attitude in the Can”, The Washington Post, Sep 3, 1994 (archived copy).
  9. The New York Times, “Phasing Out a Soda”, dateline Atlanta, Sep 12; published Sep 13, 1995 (archived copy).
  10. Margot Hornblower, “Great Xpectations of So-Called Slackers”, Time, Jun 9, 1997 (archived copy).
  11. US Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Status and Document Retrieval, OK, serial no. 74560509, registration no. 2045286. Filed Aug 10, 1994; first use May 6, 1994; registered Mar 18, 1997; cancelled Dec 20, 2003. Checked Oct 8, 2026.
  12. US Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Status and Document Retrieval, OK, registration no. 1093933. Registered Jun 20, 1978 for soft drinks; expired Mar 30, 1999. Checked Oct 8, 2026.
  13. Michael Schulman, “Everything Is Going to Be OK”, The Believer, issue 105, Feb 1, 2014. Interviews with Peter Wegner, Todd Waterbury and Daniel Clowes; quotes Mark Pendergrast’s book For God, Country, and Coca-Cola.
  14. Dave Gilson, “Clowes Encounter: An Interview With Daniel Clowes”, Mother Jones, May 13, 2010.
  15. Time, “Top 10 Bad Beverage Ideas: OK Soda”, 2010.
  16. Jake Rossen, “OK Soda: The ’90s Soft Drink for Gen X That Fell Flat”, Mental Floss, Dec 21, 2023.
  17. Ashawnta Jackson, “Sells Like Teen Spirit”, JSTOR Daily, Aug 5, 2021.
  18. Tedium, “OK Soda Marketing History: Not Good, Not Bad, Just OK”, May 5, 2020.
  19. Kat Craddock, “Remember Coca-Cola’s OK Soda?”, Saveur, Nov 11, 2020.
  20. Angela L. Pagán, “Whatever Happened To Fruitopia, The Discontinued Drink That Ruled The ’90s?”, The Takeout, Dec 2, 2024.
  21. Wikimedia Commons, File:OK Soda Original 4.jpg, photograph by TeemPlayer, dated Nov 23, 2006, CC BY-SA 3.0.
  22. YouTube upload pages for the videos embedded on this page (titles, uploaders and upload dates): “OK Soda Broadcast Ads, 1994”, “OK Soda - Thanks for being a devoted caller”, “1994 OK Soda Commercial”, “OK Soda Commercials! All Of Them (I Think)” and Slate’s Decoder Ring episode.
  23. US Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Status and Document Retrieval, OK, serial no. 74507912 (filed Apr 1, 1994) and serial no. 74544010 (filed Jun 27, 1994). Both abandoned by the applicant on Feb 3, 1995. Checked Oct 8, 2026.
Data notes (12)

Data notes

What is measured and what is not: Coca-Cola never published sales, share or spending for OK. Its annual reports on Form 10-K name the product once, in the list for 1994.123 The only sales figure is a spokesman’s “more than one million cases” in September 1995.9 Everything else on this page that looks like a number comes from the press and is attributed where it appears.

Eight cities or nine: Time (May 1994 and June 1997), The Believer and JSTOR Daily say nine test cities; The Washington Post (September 1994) and Mental Floss say eight.6101317816 We give both. The cities named in the period sources we read are Boston, Seattle, Austin, Denver and Minneapolis–St. Paul; Saveur adds Providence.67819 We could not find a complete official list, and longer lists that circulate online are unverified.

May or July 1994: The New York Times item of September 1995 says the drink had been sold “since its introduction in July 1994.”9 NPR had it on sale on May 27, The Washington Post says test marketing began in May, and the trademark record gives first use as May 6, 1994.7811 We use May and note the discrepancy. We do not know whether the million cases were counted from May or July.

The target: “3 to 4 percent of the $50 billion worldwide soft-drink market” is The Washington Post’s wording in September 1994; it does not say who set the target.8 The Believer (2014) says Zyman predicted “a billion dollars and 4 percent of the US soft-drink share,” without a period citation; treat that version as secondary.13 A similar figure is attributed to an Advertising Age article whose full text we could not read, so we do not cite it for this.5 A claim found online that the drink reached 3% in some markets has no source we could trace and is left out as unverified.

Derived figures: Derived: one million cases over about 14 months (July 1994 to September 1995, using the Times’s start date) is roughly 71,000 cases a month (1,000,000 ÷ 14 ≈ 71,400); from May it would be about 16 months and roughly 62,500.9 Mountain Dew’s 3.5% share is about 11.7 times Mello Yello’s 0.3% (3.5 ÷ 0.3), drawn as 12 bottles.6 Coca-Cola’s advertising rose $182 million, about 16%, from 1993 to 1994 ($1,308M − $1,126M; 182 ÷ 1,126).1 “About sixteen months” on sale is May 1994 to September 1995. The spokesman’s remarks are dated to Monday, September 11, 1995 from the Times’s Tuesday, September 12 dateline.9 The March 1997 registration came about eighteen months after the September 1995 phase-out.11

The card and chart series: The series 0, 0, 9, 8, 0 on the homepage card, in the “Sixteen months in test” graphic and in the rivals sparkline is a count of test cities as reported by two different publications (nine by Time in May 1994, eight by The Washington Post in September 1994).68 The zeros before the launch and after the phase-out are plotting conventions, not measurements. It is a mix of sources, not a company series.

Plans that did not happen: Time reported in May 1994 that Coca-Cola would roll OK out across the United States that summer and abroad by year-end; The Washington Post reported in September 1994 that it planned to introduce it in four other countries.68 The 1995 and 1997 sources describe only a test in eight or nine cities.910 We found no evidence of a national or foreign launch, but we did not find a statement cancelling one either.

Secondary and recollected claims: That the name was chosen because O.K. outranks Coca-Cola in worldwide recognition is Coca-Cola’s own claim, repeated in 1994; we did not find the research behind it.678 Daniel Clowes’s statements about the Manson likeness and his fee are his recollections, 16 and 20 years later.1413 His remark that the drink “was gone in two months” does not match the record.149 “Millions of kids” calling the hotline is Mark Pendergrast’s phrase as quoted by The Believer; we did not consult the book.13 Fruitopia’s 2003 US phase-out is from a 2024 food-site article, not from Coca-Cola.20 The trademark records list Coca-Cola as owner of the 1978 registration; we did not check who first applied for it or what product it covered.12

Trademark status and tier: The Dead tag rests on the two USPTO records for OK that are tied to the soda, both dead when checked on October 8, 2026, and on finding no product or re-release.1112 We did not run a full search of every mark containing OK, and Coca-Cola may hold others. Advertising Age’s page returns a bot block to scripted requests and a paywall after the first sentence. The New York Times, Time and Washington Post articles are cited from Internet Archive copies that we read in full.

Dates of videos: The 1994 dates on the commercials are the uploaders’. Upload dates are from the YouTube pages.22 We could not confirm when the hotline recording was made.

General knowledge: Mountain Dew, Mello Yello and Sprite are still sold. The Coca-Cola Company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. New Coke was introduced in 1985. September 11, 1995 was a Monday.

Sources we could not open: The full text of Advertising Age’s April 25, 1994 article; the Marketing News and Beverage World pieces of May 1994 quoted by Tedium; the Atlanta newspaper survey of teenagers mentioned by The Believer; Mark Pendergrast’s For God, Country, and Coca-Cola and Sergio Zyman’s The End of Marketing as We Know It. Nothing here relies on them directly. Wikipedia was used only to find sources.

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