Follow Up: After Frosty Reception, Coke Switches Back To Red

The end is near for a white can that has many Coke drinkers seeing red.

Coca-Cola Co. is switching back to its time-honored red just one month after rolling out its flagship cola in a snow-white can for the holidays. New seasonal cans in red will start shipping by next week, as white cans—initially expected to be in stores through February—make an exit.

While the company has frequently rung in the holiday with special can designs, this was the first time it put regular Coke in a white can. Some consumers complained that it looked confusingly similar to Diet Coke's silver cans. Others felt that regular Coke tasted different in the white cans. Still others argued that messing with red bordered on sacrilege.

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Twitter Eyes Big Marketers With New Brand Page Redesign

Twitter has gone through a whole lot of corporate turmoil in the past couple years — Ev out! Dick up! Jack back! — but at least one part of the company’s path has remained consistent: After trying to avoid becoming an ad-supported media company, it’s now embracing the idea with gusto.

So Twitter.com’s new overhaul may indeed make it easier and faster for users, as Liz Gannes reported this afternoon. But it’s also much more inviting to advertisers — the logical next step as the company tries to make Twitter more of a “consumption environment.”

There are two different things going on here: Twitter is making its basic site more attractive and engaging by making it easier to view things like embedded videos. And it has created “brand pages” for advertisers, where they can have a lot more control over what users see.

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Dr Pepper To Test Five Other Low-Calorie Sodas

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. is doubling down on Ten.

After promising early results from Dr Pepper Ten, a low-calorie version of its flagship soda, Dr Pepper Snapple is giving the same treatment to five of its other sodas, Chief Executive Larry Young said in an interview. Starting as early as January, the company will start testing 7 Up Ten, Sunkist Ten, A&W Ten and Canada Dry Ten in Columbus, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, and central Pennsylvania. It will also test RC Ten, a cola, in Chicago, Evansville, Ind., and Des Moines.

The move reflects high hopes that Dr Pepper Snapple has for its proprietary blend of no-calorie artificial sweeteners and high-fructose corn syrup to produce sodas that have a fraction of the calories of, but taste closer to, the regular versions. The combination of sweeteners yields 10 calories per eight-ounce serving compared with 100 calories for regular Dr Pepper. The company is trying to appeal to consumers who stopped drinking sodas because of the high calories, but didn't like the taste of diets.

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Student Wins $100K For Tuition In Dr Pepper Giveaway

On Saturday, during the halftime of the SEC Championship game, Ivon Padilla-Rodriguez, of Reno, Nevada, put big-time college football scouts on notice when in 30 seconds she threw 13 on-target passes into a large Dr Pepper can.

Why?

She was competing for $100,000 in tuition money, the grand prize in the Dr Pepper Million Dollar Tuition Giveaway.

Emotional and obviously very happy, Padilla-Rodriguez said, "Dr Pepper is seriously the best thing that's ever happened to me," as she was presented the oversize check at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, where the championship game between the Georgia Bulldogs and LSU Tigers was underway.

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Lipton Launches 'Caring' Initiative

To demonstrate its commitment to sustainability, Lipton has introduced the “Caring for Communities is Our Cup of Tea” initiative. Under the program, the well-known Unilever brand aims to source all of its tea from sustainably managed, Rainforest Alliance-certified farms by 2015.

The first Lipton farm was Rainforest Alliance certified in 2007. Since that time, several third-party tea estates in Kenya, Argentina and India have received certification. As well as implementing environmentally sustainable practices, Rainforest Alliance-certified farms ensure that workers and their families have adequate housing and access to medical care and education for their children.

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Gatorade's G Naturals Hopes To Reach New Market

Sports drink marketing is heavily skewed toward young men. But experts observe that the rest of the fitness world — including natural foods consumers, athletic women and families with children — present additional opportunities for growth.

“Products that have a more natural ingredient profile or are lower in calories have the potential to extend the category to people it's not currently reaching,” said Sarah Theodore, global drinks analyst for Mintel Food and Drink.

The message seems to have reached Gatorade who recently expanded distribution of G Natural, which touts the same hydration and performance benefits as original G but with ingredients like sea salt, fruit flavors and natural sweeteners. Availability was initially limited to Whole Foods Market in select cities, but G Natural can now be found in the natural set at chains like Safeway.

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Adina Teams Up With DPSG's Southwest Business Unit to Expand Distribution

Adina For Life, a beverage producer in Connecticut, has expanded its all natural zero calorie line with new flavor, Blood Orange with Mangosteen.

Launched in April 2011, Adina's line of all natural zero calorie drinks are said to be naturally sweetened with a proprietary stevia blend. The current flavors in the range include Wild Black Cherry with Resveratrol, and Maqui Melon with Tulsi.

Like the current flavors, the company claims, the new SKU will contain a 200mg blend of organic fruit and herbal extracts. Adina's proprietary herbal package contains lemon balm, valerian, chamomile, hibiscus, basil, lemon verbena, tulsi, rooibos and amalaki extracts.

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Coca-Cola Pulls White Holiday Cans After Consumer Outrage

Coca-Cola tried to revive its polar bear mascot with a wintry white can design for Coca-Cola Classic, but just one month after launch, it's abandoning the project and reverting to red, reports Mike Esterl at the Wall Street Journal.

Why? Three reasons:
       1. Some consumers are confusing the packaging with Diet Coke's similar silver cans.
       2. Others swear that the drink tastes different when in a white can.
       3. Coke's most ardent fans find the change in color blasphemous.

It goes to show that packaging -- especially for such a massively powerful brand like Coke with such fanatical followers -- matters deeply.

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