But only once
watch video
Pepsi begins testing a clear soft drink in US markets such as Sacramento, Denver and Dallas. With its official launch across the US market in January 1993, Crystal Pepsi caused a frenzy. Everyone wants to try it. The problem is that whoever tries it, never wants to drink it again. The product is still considered one of the biggest failures in the history of the food industry.
At the time, sales of Pepsi and Coca Cola were stagnant as lighter soft drinks were on the rise. So David Novak, then a marketing executive at Pepsi, had what he describes as the best idea of his career. . I was sitting in my office and it suddenly occurred to me: Why not make a Pepsi Cola that has both of these characteristics?”
Then-CEO of PepsiCo, Roger Enrico, gave it the go-ahead, and Novak began working with food scientist Surinder Kumar to come up with the recipe.
As soon as he explained his idea to Kumar, he immediately saw that there was a big problem. According to Novak, the bottle absolutely had to be transparent, but Kumar explained to him that this would leave the soda exposed to sunlight and heat: There was a risk that the contents would spoil, thereby altering the taste.
The difficulties the duo encountered would not end here. PepsiCo asked them to make a caffeine-free, preservative-free soft drink that tasted like classic Pepsi but didn't “cannibalize” its sales.
The problem was that the company refused to give them the exact price. recipe of the classic Pepsi, as it was a big corporate secret that few knew. Kumar felt like he had to defend a fortress blindfolded, he would later say.
The final product may have been presented to consumers as healthy, but it had almost the same calories as the classic Pepsi Cola.
However, when it was trialled in some markets in April 1992, the shelves were immediately empty. . Everyone wanted to try Crystal Pepsi.
Novak had targeted a national U.S. launch with a $40 million advertising campaign that would begin on January 31, 1993, with the Super Bowl.
In just 9 months, this product had gone from being just an idea, to being on the shelves.
The ad that played at the Super Bowl was set to Van Halen's “Right Now” and featured an astronaut, a hippopotamus and a woman drinking the clear soda. “Right now, we're all hungry for something different,” he said.
By March 1993, PepsiCo had sold $474 million worth of Crystal Pepsi. Coca Cola got scared and launched Tab Clear on the market to compete with it. But within a few months both products would be “dead”.
The reason? The taste of Crystal Pepsi just wasn't good enough. Novak thinks this was the best idea of his life, but the execution was very poor.
The bottlers had warned him that the soft drink did not taste enough of Pepsi Cola. One of them had predicted that no one would drink it a second time. But PepsiCo was in a rush to get the product to market and chose to ignore them.
News of Crystal Pepsi's bad aftertaste began to circulate. Bottles stacked in the sun outside gas stations were the finishing touch. The soft drinks began to spoil, resulting in the company receiving complaints from consumers about their strange taste.
By 1994, Crystal Pepsi had been discontinued, and in 2014, Time magazine named it one of the top 10 failures products of all times. The verdict was clear: The soft drink's initial success was due to nothing more than consumer curiosity.
In January 2022, PepsiCo “resurrected” Crystal Pepsi to celebrate its 30th anniversary. its circulation. Betting on nostalgia for the '90s, the company set up a competition, with a prize of a few hundred bottles of the transparent soft drink. However, he had no plans to put it back on the shelves.
