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Title: A Frosty Reception for Coca-Cola's White Christmas Cans
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-fro ... la-s-white-christmas-cans.html
Published: Dec 1, 2011
Author: -
Post Date: 2011-12-01 23:38:27 by Eric Stratton
Keywords: None
Views: 2810
Comments: 47

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.

James Ali, who owns Wall Street Deli in an Atlanta food court, said about half a dozen customers have returned opened white cans in recent days after realizing, too late, that they weren't drinking Diet Coke. He lets them take unopened diet cans without charging them again.

Coke regularly tweaks its packaging to create buzz and has a long tradition of holiday marketing, and says it helped shape the image of Santa Claus in his red suit with its 1930s advertising. Other Christmases past have featured snowflakes and polar bears, which appear on this season's cans.

Coke says this year's campaign is part of a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to highlight global warming's threat to bears' Arctic habitat. Coke is contributing up to $3 million to conservation efforts.

"The white can resonated with us because it was bold, attention-grabbing'' and "reinforced'' the campaign theme, says Scott Williamson, a spokesman for the beverage company. Coke's marketing executives wanted a "disruptive" campaign to get consumers' attention, he says.

The can-color debate pales next to the uproar of 1985, when Coke replaced its flagship cola with New Coke by changing the recipe, only to re-launch "classic'' Coke a few weeks later amid a consumer revolt.

Atlanta-based Coke says that it's happy with the campaign and that critics of the white can represent a minority. "The can has been well received and generated a lot of interest and excitement,'' says Mr. Williamson.

Coke says it will distribute more than one billion white cans and roughly the same number of seasonal red cans, which also include polar-bear images. The special red version is "a way to maintain the excitement'' until the campaign ends in February, added Mr. Williamson.

But the company initially said it would distribute more than 1.4 billion white cans in a press release that did not mention the red cans. The company now says red cans will be in the majority by Christmas and that there likely won't be any white cans on store shelves by the time February rolls around. A spokesman said a red holiday version was always part of its plans but wouldn't comment on whether the timing had changed.

Coke said it became aware of consumer complaints through Internet postings and some telephone calls to the company. Many Internet comments have been critical of the white cans. "PEOPLE! Don't be a victim,'' wrote one consumer on Twitter, warning that mixing up Coke and Diet Coke is "a SHOCK to the palate!''

Another person accused Coke of "trickery,'' and still another called the white cans "blasphemy,'' among hundreds of tweets. Some Coke fans emailed the company's official blog to complain about the company wading into the issue of climate change.

It isn't clear exactly how big the consumer reaction to the white cans was. One couple posted a video on YouTube in which the wife claims to be able to recognize whether Coke is in a white or red can during a blindfolded taste test. "This is the funky one!'' the wife shouts after drinking out of a white can.

Coke says it hasn't tweaked the taste of its cola and that protecting polar bears is a worthwhile initiative. It recently added a "fact sheet'' on its website highlighting how white Coke cans are distinct from silver Diet Coke cans. Among the differences: Regular Coke is labeled "Coca-Cola'' and states the calories at the front of the can, while Diet Coke's holiday can—silver as always—is labeled "Diet Coke'' and features snowflakes.

Most of the confusion seems to arise at small stores, where consumers grab single-serve cans from coolers. At supermarkets, packs of 12-ounce white Coke cans are wrapped in red cardboard, and packs of 7.5-ounce cans have a red plastic band announcing "RED CANS TURN WHITE.'' Coke bottles also have kept their red labels.

Mel Cyr, a 17-year-old Coke drinker from Sheboygan Falls, Wis., said she and other teenagers attending this week's National 4-H Congress in Atlanta scratched their heads after seeing the white cans. "You can't change something that's classic,'' said Ms. Cyr.

4-H delegates from Wisconsin said their chaperone was mistakenly served a regular Coke on the flight to Atlanta from Milwaukee after requesting Diet Coke. "The flight attendants were really frustrated'' and apologized for the mix-up, said Sara Harn, 17, of Brooklyn, Wis.

But Ed Rice, the 81-year-old chief executive of Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Bottling Company, a longtime Coke distributor in Springfield, Mo., thinks the white can was innovative and engaged consumers. He downplayed confusion between the cans.

"If you put the cans side by side and blink, you might have to take a second look,'' said Mr. Rice, who loaded his first Coke truck in 1945. "But I think there's a distinct difference."


Poster Comment:

Great to see that everyone's focused on the important things in life. /s

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 44.

#3. To: Eric Stratton (#0)

Coke says this year's campaign is part of a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to highlight global warming's threat to bears' Arctic habitat.

If Coke believes that polar bears are drowning, they are too stupid to get my money.


Watch this video at SolvoSermo.Com

Critter  posted on  2011-12-02   0:13:00 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#37. To: Critter (#3)

That is p*ss in your pants level hysterical...they ought to run it for all the under-18 drones currently being held prisoner in our publik skools. Best part is; kids would believe it because an ACTUAL polar bear told them...LOL!

who knows what evil  posted on  2011-12-04   10:10:12 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#38. To: who knows what evil, Critter, James Deffenbach, Eric Stratton, RickyJ (#37)

That is p*ss in your pants level hysterical...they ought to run it for all the under-18 drones currently being held prisoner in our publik skools. Best part is; kids would believe it because an ACTUAL polar bear told them...LOL!

The video is in error when the bear "says" that polar bears are not omnivores but carnivores.

According to Steve Amstrup, the chief scientist who studies the bears for Polar Bears International, "Some polar bears will roam up to 900 miles along the coast in search of food, such as berries, grasses and kelp, but these don't meet their nutritional needs, he said.

As autumn approaches, the bears migrate back to the Churchill region, where the annual freeze-up occurs sooner than elsewhere. As soon as the bay freezes, they scatter across the ice to hunt. The bears catch their prey from the surface of the sea ice. They remain there until the ice melts in summer and then the cycle repeats itself."

Now Churchill, Manitoba is the greatest lab to study the bears because each year, "An estimated 1,000 or so polar bears gather near the small town of Churchill, waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze over so they can hunt seals and other marine mammals."

But, one other detail makes for problems for the residents of Churchill: "PBI reports in just 20 years, the ice-free period in Hudson Bay has increased by an average of 20 days, cutting short the bears' seal hunting season, leaving them with little or nothing to eat."

The bears then linger in Churchill which makes for a difficult Halloween and trick or treating for the kids, even with the ever vigilant bear patrols on duty. And bears involved in human conflict such as trying to break in and pilfer snacks are anesthetized and locked in the town "polar bear jail" until they can be flown out onto the newly formed ice." (I saw a PBS documentary where an Alaskan Native woman living in a house with plywood over her windows shot and killed a polar bear that almost got in. She used an old .303 Enfield.)

The delay in freezing of Hudson Bay also causes another problem. If a bear is misbehaving and the "jail" is already full, then a late arriving delinquent may have to be shot because there's no place to lock the creature up, and there's no bay ice to airlift the bear to for release.

The bear and beluga whale tourism grew up around the early freeze over of Hudson Bay, and now that the weather patterns have changed it remains to be seen if the isolated folks of Churchill and the bears can adapt and survive. Polar bears could theoretically survive on land if not for the fact that a white critter has it rough trying to ambush any game on land.

The bears are indeed the mack daddies of the frozen North, though. (A title held by the *leopard seal in Antarctica.) The bears are fearless because they have no natural predators and everything on or under the ice is food, including tourists if they fail to follow the precautions. Bears will eat beluga whales or even narwhals that are trapped in breathing holes too far from open water to complete the trip without drowning.

And although adult polar bears can swim for hundreds of miles, their young cannot. And if they are swept out too far on an ice floe the young bears may drown trying to swim with Mommy back to the late forming ice near the coast.

FYI, I've been studying the bears of Churchill long before Al Gore and Co. began distorting the facts.

__________________________________

*Leopard seals can reach a length of 11.5 ft and weigh up to 840 lbs. They have powerful jaws and long teeth. People who survive encounters with them are often "scared white" if you'll pardon the expression.

HOUNDDAWG  posted on  2011-12-06   3:31:12 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#39. To: HOUNDDAWG (#38)

deleted

Eric Stratton  posted on  2011-12-06   8:42:43 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#40. To: Eric Stratton (#39) (Edited)

I'm not sure how a polar bear wrastles one of them outta the water.

Mee neether! I can only assume that if a narwhal surfaces in a small hole a bear can hook it. Narwhals have no reverse gear (unlike its cousin the Beluga which is capable of swimming backwards)and if a bear is strong enough to dead lift that much weight (they probably are) then it's chow time. Bears may also feast on trapped belugas as evidenced by this story:

"The bear will jump in the water, clubbing the trapped whale with his paw and gorging it with his claws. It may take several attempts but the bear usually succeeds in his catch and drags the whale’s carcass on to the ice for a feast."

I saw a news story a few years back about trapped narwhals. There were so many trying to breathe in the hole that it was barely large enough for them to move around and breathe.

The plan was to use a machine to break a path through the ice and lead the critters to open water. But it was not without risks. If the ice gave way under the machine's weight, it and the operator would likely go to the bottom too fast to prevent his death. The operator was willing to risk it but the state said no and the critters were killed.

Now, compare the picture used in the news story at the link above to the one I saved. (below) It was used in the story that explained the plan to rescue the critters which was not mentioned in the other story, presumably to minimize second guessing and criticism of the decision to kill the critters.

Photobucket

HOUNDDAWG  posted on  2011-12-07   3:13:30 ET  (1 image) Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#41. To: HOUNDDAWG (#40)

deleted

Eric Stratton  posted on  2011-12-07   8:07:45 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#42. To: Eric Stratton (#41)

I'm surprised that those things aren't hunted for their tusk or whatever it is you call that thing.

It's called a tusk and to quote wiki: "Narwhal have been harvested for over a thousand years by Inuit people in northern Canada and Greenland for meat and ivory, and a regulated subsistence hunt continues to this day."

I'm sure you know that other than subsistence hunting by native tribes, there is no lawful harvest of these marine mammals by us white folks. In fact some argue that the controversial harvest of baby fur seals is only necessary to protect people from sudden death due to their extreme cuteness.

Even the continued whaling by Japan is supposedly "for purposes of scientific research".

By exploiting this provision (art VIII) of The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling Japanese people can continue their "scientific research" into the little explored area of yummy whale recipes.

HOUNDDAWG  posted on  2011-12-10   0:55:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#43. To: HOUNDDAWG (#42)

By exploiting this provision (art VIII) of The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling Japanese people can continue their "scientific research" into the little explored area of yummy whale recipes.

If they like to eat whales then what is wrong with that?

RickyJ  posted on  2011-12-10   1:17:21 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#44. To: RickyJ (#43) (Edited)

If they like to eat whales then what is wrong with that?

Yeah, and if BP likes to extract oil and gas in The Gulf, what's wrong with that?

There's nothing wrong with liking whale meat and/or blubber. (or human liver with fava beans) But how they get them may be a problem.

Japan is a signatory to the convention to protect the dwindling whales, and it seems rather chicken shit to exploit art VIII when the act of killing the slow reproducing whales for food is antithetical to the treaty.

And if simply "liking to eat" something is all that's needed to justify killing it, then I'd be interested to read your position on science based conservation, including hunting and fishing seasons and harvest limits of any other species.

When the Lacey Act was passed in 1900 my state had no white tail deer. They'd all been shot or fallen into tiger pits, and their meat was sent to finer restaurants in New York and Europe. And long after deer seasons were reopened in other states DE had no legal deer hunting for 57 years. It took until 1957 to rebuild the collapsed deer populations to huntable numbers after unchecked greed had wiped them all out.

The problem with whaling is, Japan is indifferent to the plight of whales and they'll eat them all, and there are no "stocks in other oceans" to replenish them. And, the fewer there are left the more the Japs seem to enjoy them.

Japan doesn't own the seas or the whales. They just think they do. And their insatiable appetite for seafood will result in the nation "eating the seed corn" of all food stocks if we don't control the greedy, short-sighted little bastards.

HOUNDDAWG  posted on  2011-12-10   1:48:46 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 44.

#45. To: HOUNDDAWG (#44)

I didn't know they were an endangered species. That does make a difference.

RickyJ  posted on  2011-12-10 02:01:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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