Coke Zero Is Getting Canned In Favour Of An All-New “No Sugar” Version

The Coke/Pepsi battle has been a bloody war stretching many decades, but despite Coke‘s overall dominance in the game, the one area they’ve consistently gotten their butts kicked is in the No Sugar arena.
While Pepsi Max has been a constant and steady player in the game, Coke never seemed able to develop a product they were 100% confident in.
But back in 2005 it all looked like a corner was being turned with the release of Coke Zero – a low/no sugar variant that was spruiked as having the same (or at least very close to the same) taste as regular ole’ Coke without relying on the pile of sugar that the blessed OG drink is based on.
Fast forward 12 years and Coke is apparently done with the great Zero experiment, despite reasonable commercial success/consumer popularity/marketing efforts, announcing today that the Black Label drink will be shifted off shelves and discontinued altogether.
In its place? The all-new, slightly different “Coke No Sugar,” a drink that is reportedly the result of “years of research” and comes with the heavily promoted tag-line of being the “best tasting sugar-free Coke ever.”
The company is set to launch a marketing blitz for the new product, with giveaways of 2 million free samples to Australians, a strong presence on both TV and streaming pre-roll ads, and a veritable ocean of press shots featuring attractive people enjoying the drink near the Sydney Opera House.
See? Drink up.
The branding of the new drink makes it reasonably indistinguishable from the classic red Coke labels, save for a Black “No Sugar” banding around the top.
In a statement issued to press, Coca-Cola Australia President Roberto Mercadé asserted that it was “the closest we have ever come to the classic taste of Coca-Cola.”


“We wanted the experience of drinking Coca-Cola No Sugar to be as close as possible to ‘The Real Thing’. That’s no small task when you consider the original has been cherished by consumers for more than a century.”

“Faced with this challenge, our team of taste experts spent five years mixing different flavours and conducting 18 separate consumer trials before finally cracking it. With the new Coca-Cola No Sugar, they’ve delivered the best tasting sugar-free cola we’ve made.”

And as for the product giveaway, which consumers will be able to access via a range of different promotions and public stunts including smartphone vouchers, accessing Shazam during TV ads, and voice-activated outdoor advertising panels, Mercadé said:


“We’ve never tried anything this ambitious in terms of giving Australians the chance to try our latest drink for free. We want Coca-Cola No Sugar to be within an arm’s reach of wherever you are, whenever you desire.”


Welp.

Coke No Sugar is scheduled to hit Australian shelves from June 16th. The product will initially be available concurrently with Coke Zero, before Zero is slowly phased out over time.

Photo: George Frey/Getty.

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