Move over La Croix, there’s a new hip and trendy drink in town. Well, it’s actually just Diet Coke, but its makeover makes it seem like a whole new beverage.
Earlier this month, Diet Coke announced its new packaging and four new flavors — ginger lime, twisted mango, zesty blood orange and feisty cherry.
literal thirst trap. #SoManyFlavors pic.twitter.com/CpdmTk3lYh
— Diet Coke (@DietCoke) January 10, 2018
The cans are skinnier than the original soda cans and feature brightly colored bans down their side, but the OG Diet Coke flavor hasn’t undergone any changes. “The truth is Diet Coke is a great-tasting brand and what all people have told us in all of our research is ‘Do not change the taste of Diet Coke,'” a Coca-Cola spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal.
Fearing a repetition of the disastrous 1985 concoction “New Coke,” the company conducted focus groups, speaking to more than 10,000 people across the U.S., and experimenting with 30 flavor combinations before settling on the final four.
The new campaign is an effort to target millennials who may have strayed from soda into sparkling water — even posting a tweet boasting about the new “insta-worthy can.” According to AdAge, the revamp is Diet Coke’s largest product and marketing makeover in its 36-year history and follows a sales slump of 3.7 percent.
WSJ reports that U.S. soda sales have declined by $1.2 billion over the past five years. Contrastingly, sparkling water sales have grown by $1.4 billion, according to retail sales data from the market research firm IRI.
Though Diet Coke has created fruity flavors to compete with La Croix-like drinks, will millennials abandon their sparkling water ways?
