Three Of A Kind

Well, here it is. The Coca-Cola is officially hacking me off for their pointless stupidity. Take a look at this picture. What do you see? Three 24 ounce plastic bottles of Coke. Each with a distinctively different coloured cap. One red, one white and one black. These are all readily available on my grocers shelves right now. At the same time. This is extremely confusing to me because each of these cap colours have, up till now denoted a different brand of Coke. Red for Classic, Black for the new, crappy Coke Zero and White is the cap colour for Diet Coke. Other Coca-Cola brands have different colours. It's a branding factor and one that Coke drinkers use to ID their beverage. Someone has messed with the marketting.

This isn't a case of changing a cap colour for a specific promotion, these lids have no message, no game, nothing. Just different coloured cap.

Why? Anyone out there want to let me know why these changes are happening? I know one set of guys who cannot tell me. The Coke delivery people I have talked to at stores. They have no clue why the change is occurring. A change like this makes a Coke drinker wonder. Are these bottles mislabelled? Miscapped? What? As a consumer the change gives me pause in my purchasing due to that very question. If a change without reason occurs, (like a promotion) then I have to pause and possibly delay my purchase or go elsewhere to see if the brand is correct.

That's precisely what I had to do recently with these Cokes. I am used to the red cap and when I was presented with an entire shelf of black topped Cokes with a couple of red topped far in the back of the shelf I was handed a conundrum. Checking the dates let me know that the black caps were newer and from a different lot, definitely room for some bottling plant error here. I cut my risks and bought the older red caps...better safe than stuck with a bunch of mislabelled Coke Zero.

So, guys and gals at Coca-Cola....get it together. Don't screw with what works. If you have a bunch of new marketing people working for you and they suggested this...fire them. Do it now. Why? Two words for you, people.

New Coke.

'Nuff Said!