OK Soda
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| Type | Soft drink |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | The Coca-Cola Company |
| Distributor | Coca-Cola Enterprises, others |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Introduced | 1993 |
| Discontinued | 1995 |
| Flavour | Cola |
| Related products | Coca-Cola |
OK Soda was a soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1993 that aggressively courted the Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics, including endorsements and even outright negative publicity. It did not sell well in select test markets and was officially declared out of production in 1995 before reaching nationwide distribution. The drink's slogan was "Everything is going to be OK."
In 1993, Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta rehired Sergio Zyman to be the chief of marketing for all Coca-Cola beverage brands, a surprising choice given that Zyman had worked closely with the New Coke campaign, possibly the largest advertising failure in Coke's history. However, after revamping the can design and print advertising campaigns for Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Classic with great success, Zyman was given free rein to design new products with aggressive, offbeat marketing campaigns.
International market research done by The Coca-Cola Company in the late 1980s revealed that "Coke" was the second most recognizable word across all languages in the world. The first word was "OK". Zyman (who also conceived Fruitopia) decided to take advantage of this existing brand potential and created a soft drink with this name. He conceived of a counter-intuitive advertising campaign that intentionally targeted people who did not like advertising. He predicted that the soft drink would be a huge success, and promised Goizueta that the soft drink would take at least 4% of the US beverage market.
Despite a nationwide advertising campaign and intense media attention, OK Soda was marketed only in select areas, representing different demographic areas during the summer of 1993. Four separate can designs were used (with each test market getting all four designs). Coke announced at the time that they would continually update the cans with new designs (later designs can be identified by having an explanatory tag saying that it is "A unique fruity soda"). Some of the testing locations were:
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