> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Am I the only one around that actually liked Crystal Pepsi?
You were one of 6 or 7 people who liked it. Pepsi should have known better; proper market research would have shown them that it was a bad idea. Which just goes to show that focus-groups are only useful if you ask the right questions. Here's what they would have learned: Coca-Cola tried it 40 years earlier during World War II, and it was an abysmal failure then too. The carmel color in Coke and Pepsi is made heating sugar basicly until it burns. Sugar rationing for the war effort made this prohibitive, so they tried to sell Coke without the carmel color. Nobody bought it more than once. So Coke made a deal with the Department of the Army: Coke would build bottling plants all over Europe to make sure that every serviceman could get a Coke for a nickel no matter where the war took them in exchange for an increased sugar ration (and a huge captive market). The Army bought into it by helping to finance the bottling plants, and when the war ended Coke had a manufacturing and distribution network that covered the entire western world. This didn't go over so well in France, who saw it as a corrupting influence on their culture, and as competition to their wine industry. In the early 1950's the vinters & winemakers association successfully lobbied the French governement to ban the sale of Coke. Within a week it was front page news in every town in America, and suddenly France was faced with a public-relations nightmare of epic proportions. People were outraged that they would snub something so American as Coke after we save their butts from the Germans. All across the US people were pouring French wine out on the street rather than drink it, burning French postcards and throwing out their French silk. Within days French exporters started to feel the pinch as order after order was cancelled. The French economy was still on very shakey ground after the war, and US exports were a substantial fraction of their income at the time. Faced with financial ruin, a coalition of business groups (including the vinters & winemakers) begged the French government to repeal the ban, which they did without much delay. And that's how Coca-Cola took over the world. In their 2000 stockholder report they provided consumption figures for every major country in the world, and in many countries Coke was the #2 beverage, after water. In a couple of countries (I think Peru was one of them) it was #1. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program. -Brad _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
