Why one man is responsible for your obsession with Diet Coke
Diet Coke’s about as recognisable and culturally significant as its red full-fat sibling.
First launched in 1982 amidst a wave of fitness crazes and diet fads, its marketing was spearheaded by Sergio Zyman, a Coca-Cola marketing executive.
Having joined the company in 1979 from Pepsi, Zyman was also involved in the mess that was New Coke. If you aren’t familiar with New Coke, it was a refresh of the original Coca-Cola flavour that, to cut a long story short, didn’t go down well with consumers.
New Coke flopped so badly that the company ended up back-pedaling a few months later to reintroduce the original recipe.
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Zyman nevertheless appeared on Fortune Magazine’s cover with the headline ‘So You Fail. So What?’, with the subsequent story being that New Coke was a success in terms of bringing Coca-Cola to the height of the zeitgeist once again, with boosted sales and brand awareness once the original rolled back into town.
While that was going on, the marketing executive claims he was instrumental in pushing for the company to introduce a diet version of Coca-Cola amidst the wave of diet sodas that characterised 80s beverage habits.
"I asked Coke’s president, Brian Dyson, 'What about Diet Coke? We don't have it,’” said Zyman, according to daughter Jennifer’s account in Food & Wine.
“The response was, ‘Look, we've done a lot of trials, but Ike [Herbert — the acting marketing head at the time] doesn’t think it's a good idea.’” Nevertheless, Zyman said he was persistent with the idea, eventually convincing new CEO Roberto Goizueta to take the plunge when he took over from Paul Austin.
Goitzueta gave Zyman the go-ahead, with the project being dubbed ‘Project Harvard’ internally in reference to Zyman’s postponement of studies at Harvard Business School in order to lead the it.
Zyman’s masterstroke was to set Diet Coke up as a regular drink with zero calories, rather than focusing on its position as a calorie-free alternative to regular Coke.
"The idea behind it was that we couldn't succeed in launching it as a diet drink," he told Jennifer. "The diet market was 10% of the market. We had to launch it as a regular soft drink without calories. Not a diet drink."
Instead of focusing on the diet element, the branding focused on the flavour instead: ‘Just for the taste of it’. This famous slogan switched the conversation from being about losing weight to just enjoying a refreshing drink, taking advantage of the broad view that diet drinks didn’t taste as good as the full-fat options.
Just a few months after its 1982 launch, Zyman claimed Diet Coke had already overtaken Dr Pepper and 7UP to become America’s third-biggest soft drink. By 1983, it was the leading diet soda in the US.
His success with Diet Coke didn’t win him the plaudits he hoped for, it seems, and his departure in 1988 was reportedly linked to New Coke’s demise in 1985. However, he told Jennifer: “I left primarily because I didn’t feel my efforts were being appreciated.
“And I was tired. I was being blamed for some of the bad things at Coke and not being credited for the good things, like the launch of ‘Coke Is It.’”
If you’ve ever worked in a marketing team, you’ll know it’s a tough gig. Feeling like you’re only as valuable as your most recent project’s success is hardly alien to the profession, as is feeling unappreciated for marketing’s impact on broader business goals.
Considering Diet Coke’s ongoing success and cultural cachet, Zyman’s impression that he was blamed for certain missteps and tagged with New Coke’s failure must have been tough to swallow. At least he could wash it down with a flavourful, calorie-free beverage, of course.
Rachael Davis