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Apple Card is the credit card created by

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the new Apple Vision Pro or any products

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at Apple. And you can automatically grow your

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daily cash at 4.50% annual percentage yield Apply

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for Apple Card in the Wallet app

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on iPhone. Apple Card subject to credit

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approval. Savings available to Apple Card owners

0:23

subject to eligibility. Apple Card

0:25

in savings by Goldman Sachs Bank

0:27

USA, Salt Lake City branch. Member

0:29

FDIC, terms apply. There's

0:38

a rite of passage that's coming for you, whether

0:40

you want it to or not. They're

0:42

called, among other things, millennials. It's

0:45

when your generation is laughed by the one

0:47

coming up behind it. Gen Z is the

0:49

next wave, and turns out there's quite a

0:51

bit that makes them uniquely them. You may

0:54

be a little skeptical about the very concept

0:56

of generations. You might think that they're just

0:58

conjured up to sell us stuff and make

1:00

us feel like we belong. It

1:03

doesn't matter. The

1:08

world turns, young people get older, they

1:10

look at the new young people and say,

1:14

what's your deal? In

1:20

the early 1990s, the generation

1:22

of the moment inspired even

1:25

more head-scratching than usual. Generation

1:27

X. They apparently feel

1:29

the older baby boomers have taken all

1:31

the good jobs and all the good

1:33

real estate. They are angst-ridden,

1:35

a bit bitter, and their chief

1:37

talent seems to be the ironic

1:40

aside. The skeptical,

1:42

flannel-clad, authenticity-craving members of

1:45

Generation X had watched the baby

1:47

boomers sell out their values, morphing

1:49

from hippies to yuppies. And

1:51

they were not impressed. Everything on

1:53

TV sucks. Notoriously

1:58

Disdainful.. Yeah,

2:00

that was particularly put off by

2:02

marketing was presented a problem for

2:05

companies trying to sell stuff who

2:07

began to explore novel sales pitches.

2:10

And know products from this era was

2:12

marketed with. More novelty than

2:14

one from Coca Cola.

2:18

What exactly is okay states

2:20

carbonated beverage by the quotation

2:22

marks around beverage to make

2:25

it more specialized. What makes

2:27

it so special? The oh

2:29

cleaners of it's. Okay

2:31

soda with a soft drink that sold

2:33

itself by underselling itself and attitude that

2:36

was right there. And his name. Is.

2:38

The kids were skeptical about advertising.

2:40

Here was advertising. That said, I.

2:42

Know right? Voters

2:45

has been a marketing efforts

2:47

that exclude some people. This.

2:50

Wasn't a soda for every one

2:53

just for people in on the

2:55

joke, but even so, it's ambitions.

2:57

We're not small, and for a

2:59

brief moment, even at Coca Cola

3:01

saw a soda promising to be

3:04

just. Okay, just might

3:06

be a billion dollar

3:08

idea. This

3:17

is decoder ring. I will have hoskin.

3:20

Thirty years ago, okay soda arrived

3:22

in some less stores. Is

3:25

have crowing about her? Spectacular. It

3:27

was a offered us a liquid

3:29

shrugs a cz irony it was

3:31

an inside joke of a soda.

3:33

For people who knew soda wasn't

3:35

cool. And it promptly went

3:37

viral and then had to try

3:40

and figure out how sustainable. In

3:43

today's episode, we're going to ask

3:45

how Coca Cola a predicated on

3:47

the idea that so that isn't

3:50

more than okay ever bankrolled project?

3:52

A project to depending on how

3:54

you look at it was either

3:56

a corporate. Attempt to market

3:58

authenticity or. Bob send

4:01

up of consumer capitalism a

4:03

project that either utterly predictable

4:06

he sailed or that surprisingly

4:08

almost succeeded. So. Today

4:10

on Decoder ring. How do

4:12

you make the case of

4:14

a generation. On.

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discover.com/credit Card. I.

5:12

Want to start the story of okay so

5:15

it out a couple of years before the

5:17

first ten acts or was even born when

5:19

Coca Cola reigns supreme and it's a rival,

5:21

Pepsi decided to do something about S. Nineteen

5:28

sixties had he began appealing to them fleeting

5:30

young people on one side of the so

5:32

called Settle race. And

5:39

it worked. Aligning themselves with

5:41

a young baby boomers help

5:43

Pepsi grow faster, as did

5:45

another infamous campaigns. Was of

5:48

as well as assessing thousands of people

5:50

across the country to let alone faces

5:52

on. In ad featuring the Pepsi

5:54

Challenge regular people blind taste test

5:56

it's. both cola By

6:02

the late 1970s, Coke was still the

6:04

larger company, but Pepsi had been gaining

6:06

on it for years. Coke

6:08

needed to shake things up. So

6:10

the president of the company took

6:13

a young, ambitious, Mexican-born Pepsi employee

6:15

named Sergio Zeman out to

6:17

lunch. He said, so what do

6:19

you think of Coke? I said, I think

6:21

you guys are incredibly

6:23

powerful and successful, and

6:26

you just squander every opportunity that

6:28

you have. So he offered me a

6:30

job. Zeman understood his new

6:33

role in very specific terms. I

6:36

got hired to challenge the status

6:38

quo. The status quo

6:40

at Coke had long been, we make

6:42

one flagship product that tastes one way.

6:45

Zeman was charged with spearheading the

6:48

first drink to challenge that. Oh,

6:50

it's new Diet Coke! And you're

6:52

gonna drink it. Oh, for the

6:54

Coke. Diet

6:56

Coke launched in 1982. Its

6:59

success showed Coke that it could

7:01

change, while also turning Zeman into

7:04

a company wonderkind. For

7:06

his troubles, he was put on Coke's

7:08

next new top secret project. One met

7:10

to combat Pepsi's claim about its taste.

7:12

For nearly a century, Coca-Cola has

7:15

had the same distinctive taste. Well,

7:17

hold on to your hats. It's

7:19

being changed. New Coke was rolled out

7:21

with much fanfare in April of 1985 by a

7:23

Coke leadership. Sure,

7:26

it was going to revitalize the

7:28

company. What do you think about

7:31

Coke changing its formula? I don't like it. Why

7:33

not? It's too sweet. I don't

7:36

like it. I don't like it at all. I

7:38

don't understand it because they were doing fine, I

7:40

thought. They can't do it. That's un-American because we

7:42

fought wars to have

7:44

a choice, to have freedom. Something

7:47

like 75% of America says they didn't

7:50

like new Coke. But I know we're

7:52

dead. We're done. 77

7:55

days after launching new Coke, the

7:57

company backed down and reintroduced the

8:00

original Coke now called

8:02

Coca-Cola Classic. We're really

8:04

sorry for any discontent that

8:07

we may have caused for almost three months.

8:10

And Coca-Cola Classic is truly a

8:12

celebration of loyalty. Coke

8:14

had blundered badly, and someone

8:17

was going to have to pay the price. I

8:19

was the guy that took the blame. It

8:21

was convenient, right? I mean, I was disposable. New

8:24

Coke's failure was an odd kind of failure,

8:27

though. It ended up reminding people

8:29

how much they loved the old Coke,

8:31

and the company started to gain market

8:33

share over Pepsi. So this

8:35

failure ended up being an

8:37

unwitting success, albeit one that

8:39

cost Sergio Zeman his job.

8:42

It was also one from which you could

8:44

take all sorts of lessons. And

8:46

for our purposes, I want to point at

8:49

two in particular. The first has to do

8:51

with risk. New Coke was

8:53

a huge risk that failed massively,

8:55

and yet the company not only

8:57

survived, it thrived. Someone

8:59

not so conservative can point to what happened

9:02

and say, it's not that risky to do

9:04

new things. We just lived

9:06

through violently face-planting with new Coke.

9:09

What could be risky compared to that? The

9:12

second lesson has to do with taste. One

9:15

of the ideas driving New Coke was

9:17

that taste is all important. She

9:20

was beating Coke in taste tests, so Coke

9:22

made a soda that tasted better. It

9:24

should have all been easy from there. But

9:27

it wasn't, because what Coke tasted

9:29

like mattered less than what

9:31

Coke and the tradition of

9:33

Coke meant to people. And

9:36

I'm drawing all of this out because it

9:38

has direct bearing on the birth of OK

9:40

Soda, a risky

9:43

project dreamed up by Sergio

9:45

Zeman that began with no particular

9:47

taste at all. Seltzer

10:00

company, clearly Canadian, and

10:02

the highly caffeinated anti-freeze-colored

10:04

Mountain Dew. But Coke didn't make

10:07

a tea or a Seltzer, and sales of

10:09

its Mountain Dew rival, Mellow Yellow,

10:11

were miniscule. Coke again

10:13

needed a change, and so five

10:15

years after he'd left the company

10:17

as the fall guy for New

10:20

Coke, Sergio Zeman was brought back

10:22

to challenge the status quo, now

10:24

as the chief marketing officer. And

10:27

Sergio thought he knew exactly what Coke

10:29

needed. I think we've got to

10:31

create a brand new Seltzer, from scratch. Nobody

10:34

had launched a brand new Seltzer. Mellow Yellow

10:36

was a copy of Mountain Dew. Powery

10:38

was a copy of Gatorade. This was

10:40

a brand new Seltzer. And

10:42

he wanted to develop it in a

10:44

brand new way. We always start in

10:46

the lab, and we try to come up with a new

10:49

flavor, then we kind of stick a brand on it, and

10:51

then try to market it. And he said, let's

10:53

reverse that. Brian Lanahan was an

10:56

employee at Coca-Cola when Zeman tapped him

10:58

to become his director of special projects.

11:01

Let's go find an idea

11:03

that connects with consumers, aka

11:05

teenagers, and then build the

11:07

product to suit the brand.

11:10

Brian was the point guy on this new

11:12

undefined soft drink, one that wouldn't start with

11:14

a taste, but with a brand custom made

11:17

for young people. And

11:19

it was unusual in another way, too. This

11:21

is all, of course, top secret. Coke

11:23

loves to have, you know, secret formula locked

11:25

in the bank vault. It's the wellspring of

11:28

the company. The company

11:30

wanted this new project to be secret

11:32

for a reason. Because there

11:34

was a sense of ideas got deboned as

11:36

they went up, and by the time they

11:38

got to the top, all the edges had

11:40

been honed off. Did this project have a

11:43

secret code name? Yes. It was called Project

11:45

X. You can't believe it. In

11:52

the summer of 1993, Coke

11:54

reached out to a number of

11:56

advertising agencies about Project X, including

11:59

Y. Biden and Kennedy. Just do

12:01

it! Biden

12:04

and Kennedy was Nike's agency, and like

12:06

Nike, it was based in Oregon, in

12:09

Portland. Campaigns like Just

12:11

Do It and sneaker ads featuring the

12:13

Beatles song Revolution had helped it build

12:15

a reputation as one of the hippest

12:18

advertising shops in the country. They

12:20

were cooler than we were, you know? We were like Coke.

12:23

So we wanted to be out there on the

12:26

edge of culture, and this is Coke letting its

12:28

hair down. They were like, look,

12:30

you understand Teen Boys, you're doing amazing

12:32

work for Nike, we're getting killed

12:34

by Mountain Dew, and we

12:36

need to create a drink that would be

12:38

successful as a Teen Boy audience. Robin

12:41

Janides was fielding new business at Wyden and

12:43

Kennedy when Coke called. They were looking for

12:45

kind of the overnight

12:47

success billion dollar brand. So

12:50

I went to Dan Wyden and said, hey, Dan,

12:52

Coke called. And of course, when Coke calls, any

12:54

agency is going to be like, yeah. And he's like,

12:56

why would we want to work with them? Then

12:59

explained to Dan Wyden, her boss, that

13:01

though the project was coming from stodgy

13:03

old Coke, it was a rare opportunity

13:05

to make a brand completely from

13:08

scratch. Coke asked

13:10

Wyden and Kennedy to put together a

13:12

team dedicated to this new, unformed brand.

13:15

Well, we basically went out to talk to Teen

13:17

Boys, and we were asking them

13:20

about their lifestyle and what they were interested

13:22

in. And there was definitely like kind

13:24

of an air of pessimism. I

13:27

think there was this sense that brands were

13:29

all about celebrities and beautiful people. Everything

13:32

was asking them to be more than who they were.

13:34

I'm just this kid who's trying to

13:36

become an adult and trying to assemble an

13:38

identity. And all these brands are

13:41

putting these images out of me that I have to live up

13:43

to. And at one point, this one kid

13:45

just said, you know, everyone, all these sodas like try to

13:47

act like they're going to change your life. And really, so

13:49

does just okay. For

13:52

some reason, that just rippled through us and we're like, what

13:54

if soda was just okay? What

13:58

Cokes Brian Lanahan is saying. saying is

14:00

that OK, soda would say the

14:03

quiet part out loud. Soda

14:05

is just fine. In

14:08

acknowledging this, the brand was

14:10

putting itself in cahoots with

14:12

the consumer. It was making

14:14

eye contact and winking about

14:17

all the patronizing, dishonest, basic

14:19

brands that pretend they're so great,

14:21

brands that include, of course,

14:24

Coca-Cola itself. But

14:26

that's not going to play well inside

14:29

the tower of Coca-Cola. So

14:31

that is not how they sold the name to

14:33

Coke. Instead, the official story

14:35

about where OK, soda's name comes

14:37

from, the one you read in

14:39

articles and books, hinges on a

14:41

series of connections between the word

14:43

OK and the word Coke.

14:46

Like, O and K are the second and

14:48

third letter in the word Coke. And

14:50

OK is Coke's stock ticker symbol,

14:52

KO, backwards. But the most

14:55

compelling connection of all is

14:57

that apparently Coke is the

14:59

second most well-known English language

15:01

word in the world. And

15:04

the first is the word

15:06

OK. So that

15:09

sense of scope and scale helped

15:11

bring the idea into the building

15:13

because it fit that language

15:15

of big business and power and

15:17

worldwide effect. So

15:21

OK, soda had its name, even

15:23

if it was a name that meant different things to

15:25

different people. Now all

15:27

they had to do was figure

15:30

out every single other detail. Apple

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16:49

How do you make a soda? The

16:53

core creative team tasked with making okay

16:56

soda wasn't your typical group of marketing

16:58

suits and advertising executives. You know, you're

17:00

putting something out into someone else's space

17:02

that they don't even want to see, but they're

17:04

going to run into it. You're kind

17:07

of polluting. Charlotte Moore was an

17:09

art director at Widening Kennedy, and

17:11

she was amused to find herself selling a

17:13

soda that promised everything would be okay. I'm

17:15

a person who never thinks that things

17:17

are going to be okay whatsoever. And

17:20

so for me personally, there was a

17:22

lot of just making fun of myself.

17:25

Charlotte was teamed up with a copywriter named

17:27

Peter Wegder, who was just as ambivalent about

17:30

advertising. It was just

17:32

a way to make money. It wasn't actually

17:34

what I set out to do. He

17:37

wanted to be an artist, and so he would

17:39

take jobs, save some money, and leave. In

17:42

fact, he'd already quit Widening Kennedy once, but

17:44

then he got a call about the Koch project. I

17:47

was destitute, and I just

17:50

had to have work. And I remember I

17:52

looked at a job as a photo finisher,

17:54

and I thought, okay, this is

17:56

minimum wage in toxic chemicals.

17:59

So... I guess I'll throw my hat

18:01

back in the ring. Advertising is better than

18:04

that, basically. Yes. Let me put

18:06

it this way, it pays better. Peter

18:08

and I got along really, really well in

18:10

terms of kind of like just batting the

18:12

ideas back and forth. You know, I

18:15

would say things to him or vice

18:17

versa that were completely absurd, but Peter

18:19

knew how to play with that frequency.

18:23

Any brand has to establish, let's just say for

18:25

lack of a better word, a voice, a personality,

18:28

some kind of a presence. We

18:31

just went about building that. Charlotte

18:34

and Peter wanted the brand to

18:36

be interactive, but low-tech. They wanted

18:38

it to be surprising by tweaking

18:40

familiar forms. They wanted it to

18:42

be intricate and absurd. And

18:44

to make it real, they knew they

18:47

were going to need way more than

18:49

just concepts. The role I had

18:51

as I walked in was, how

18:54

do I bring kind of shape

18:56

and voice and form to it

18:58

from a design perspective? That's

19:00

Todd Waterberry, the designer who joined the

19:02

team to handle the logo, the packaging,

19:05

the two liter bottles, the cans.

19:08

And the cans are where I want

19:10

to start looking closely at what this

19:12

trio would build, because there

19:14

wasn't just one. Ultimately,

19:16

there were seven. They were

19:18

sleek and graphic in silver, white, red,

19:21

and black, with the OK logo slapped

19:23

on like a sticker. They had large,

19:25

deadpan faces staring out of them, including

19:27

one drawn by the now-famous graphic novelist,

19:29

Dan Clowes. They were

19:31

dappled with text, and they looked

19:34

like metallic alt-weekly vending machines, zines.

19:37

Some of them would be placed in cardboard 12-packs

19:39

covered in illustrations. But

19:41

Todd didn't stop with what was on the

19:43

outside of the box. And I

19:45

had this idea of printing on the inside of

19:47

it. So when you'd open it up, you'd want

19:49

to find out like, what is this? In

19:52

one instance, he drew a diagram outlining how

19:54

to turn the box into an ice cube

19:56

tray. This

19:58

sort of absurd, unduly, elaborate humor

20:01

was all over the project.

20:03

Ok soda's name might be lackadaisical

20:06

and blase, but in every other

20:08

way the brand was trying hard

20:10

to amuse and delight its target

20:13

customer with send-ups of traditional marketing.

20:16

Perhaps more Ok soda would make you feel even

20:18

more ok. Please note,

20:20

there's no such thing as too

20:22

much ok-ness. We

20:25

were trying to talk to people in a

20:27

tone of voice or in a register that

20:30

might catch somebody off guard, address

20:32

them in a way that hadn't been

20:34

addressed before. Peter wrote

20:36

an Ok soda manifesto that kicked off

20:38

with the line, What's the point of

20:40

ok? Well, what's

20:43

the point of anything? Todd made

20:45

Ok soda shoelaces and pocket tees

20:47

with lines from the manifesto inside

20:50

of the pocket. Charlotte

20:52

came up with the idea of putting

20:54

an Ok soda chain letter in the

20:56

mail. It described oddball coincidences that befell

20:59

people after they drank ok. And

21:02

then they decided to turn the chain

21:04

letter idea into a TV commercial. You're

21:07

blind. This is a television chain letter

21:09

promoting old ks soda. And

21:11

then there was the hotline. I managed to

21:13

persuade the people at Coca-Cola to do an

21:16

800 number. And I think

21:18

at that time they had no 800 numbers

21:20

for any of their brands. Thanks for

21:22

being such a devoted caller of the

21:24

Ok hotline. Please listen closely

21:26

to this Ok coincidence selected

21:28

especially for you. Callers

21:31

to the 1-800 number would be

21:33

able to use the keypad to

21:35

take an Ok soda personality inventory

21:37

assessing their levels of ok-ness. They

21:40

would be able to hear more Ok soda

21:42

coincidences or be put on perpetual hold

21:44

or hear a poem among

21:47

other delightfully ridiculous

21:49

options. They

21:52

would also be able to leave messages of

21:55

their own. own.

22:00

The thing starts inventing itself as

22:02

generative. It just goes and goes

22:05

and goes. It's kind of dangerously

22:07

close to just amusing

22:09

yourself, but for money.

22:11

You were developing this

22:14

world that became incredibly

22:16

identifiable. If you scour this

22:18

world, though, there is one thing that

22:20

is not identifiable. And it's

22:22

what the soda, what the fluid that

22:24

people would put in their mouths

22:27

actually tasted like. In

22:29

fact, the only description of the

22:31

drink itself in all of this

22:33

is that it's a carbonated beverage

22:36

with the word beverage in quotes.

22:39

There is that acknowledgement that it is

22:41

just soda. It is just what it

22:43

is. This is what

22:46

made OK Soda unique. It knows it's just

22:48

a soda, and that's kind of respectful

22:50

and refreshing. There

22:52

was, however, a more pragmatic reason

22:54

the soda itself was barely mentioned

22:56

in any of the zany materials

22:59

the team was developing. And

23:01

it said it didn't have a taste

23:04

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23:50

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23:52

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23:54

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23:57

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23:59

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24:01

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24:03

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24:19

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24:21

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24:28

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on the Odyssey app or wherever you

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get your podcasts. So

24:44

you'll recall, Ok Soda was developed in

24:46

a new way. Brand first,

24:48

then the liquid. Don't start in

24:50

the lab, start out in the

24:52

field. You'll also recall that

24:55

Ok Soda was developed in secret so it

24:57

could stay weird. But now it was time

24:59

to stop keeping the secret in order

25:02

to develop the soda itself. I

25:04

remember our first meeting with the technical folks. They

25:07

have their own building in the Coke complex and

25:09

they wear white coats. They're almost like the high

25:11

priests and priestesses of Coca-Cola. Brian Lanahan, the Coke

25:13

employee, who was part of the Ok team. And

25:15

we sat down with the head of technical and

25:17

he goes, OK, what do

25:19

you want me to make? What should the drink

25:22

taste like? Peter Wegner, the copywriter,

25:24

was there too. And I said, I

25:26

run. And he just looked

25:28

at me and he wasn't amused.

25:31

But the idea of, you know, the taste of

25:33

irony. Exactly. There in lies the problem as we

25:35

had gotten so far into the idea that it

25:37

was like, how do we pin it to something

25:39

you're going to buy and drink? Thus

25:41

began a long belabored process in

25:43

which Ok Soda had to become

25:45

a soda. The team

25:48

had some ideas. Ironic might be a

25:50

difficult flavor profile, but Ok Soda was

25:52

not supposed to be a regular soda.

25:55

It was supposed to be for people who got it. Maybe

25:58

it should be less sugary. Maybe

26:00

it shouldn't be carbonated. Maybe it

26:02

should be sold in smaller batches

26:04

in smaller, non-chain stores. Maybe

26:07

it should be put out by a company

26:09

with a different name that was just owned

26:11

by Coca-Cola. Of course, none of that

26:13

fit with the scale that Coke wanted to

26:15

bring to this, because they saw the idea

26:17

as like, this is the second most understood

26:20

word in the world. We can have this

26:22

everywhere and we'll sell millions, you know? Ultimately,

26:25

they landed on a drink with a

26:27

reddish-brown color and a taste that already

26:29

was kind of everywhere. We

26:32

ended up choosing a product that was based

26:34

on what's called a suicide, which is a

26:36

nickname for when teenagers are at Burger Camp

26:38

or McDonald's and they take a squirt down

26:40

the fountain line, they take some orange

26:42

and some Dr. Pepper and some Coke and you mix it

26:45

all up. In taste tests

26:47

in the lab, people seemed to like it,

26:49

and the project started to gain momentum. Coke

26:52

had wanted a soda that wasn't conventional

26:54

or created by committee, and now OK

26:56

Soda was just about the weirdest drink

26:59

they'd ever made. They were

27:01

thrilled. The excitement around the

27:03

idea caused it to just get put

27:05

on this fast train, you know, into

27:07

the Coke system. And the

27:09

Coke system did what the Coke system does.

27:12

It took this oddball drink aimed

27:14

at a standoffish and selective audience

27:17

and tried to treat it like Coke. So,

27:20

for example, Coke's lawyers looked

27:22

into trademarking the phrase, things

27:24

are going to be OK.

27:27

And in the run-up to its

27:29

release, OK Soda was featured in

27:31

Time magazine. Serious, prestigious, lots of

27:33

eyeballs, but not exactly the Bible

27:35

of America's youth. Then

27:38

Coke introduced it to journalists and investors

27:40

at a luncheon at the Four Seasons

27:42

in New York and started running wall-to-wall

27:44

print, radio and TV advertisements. In

27:47

the spring of 1994, as

27:49

the soda was released in

27:51

seven test markets, including Seattle,

27:53

Boston, Boston and Little Rock,

27:55

Coke predicted OK Soda would

27:57

become a one-year-old soda. billion

28:00

dollar brand. So

28:02

we went from kind of this edge

28:04

of culture idea to this is going

28:06

to be the biggest thing since New

28:08

Code. That sounds

28:10

like a jinx. But

28:13

somehow, it wasn't. Loved

28:16

it. Like the flavor of it was nothing like

28:18

I had ever tasted before. That's

28:20

Dustin Ness. He spent the summer

28:22

of 1994 biking and rollerblading around

28:25

his hometown in western Minnesota. Yeah,

28:27

just to paint the picture a little bit, right?

28:29

The town is Ada, very small.

28:31

We had roughly about 1,700 people. How

28:34

old were you when this was happening? So I would have been

28:37

right around 13. Yeah, and

28:40

I'm a year younger than Dusty, so I was about 12. That's

28:43

Dusty's cousin, Matt Purrington. Matt

28:46

would come for the summer, about two weeks. Those

28:48

summers, those were the best summers of all time. The

28:51

cousins spent their days outside, often

28:53

stopping at one of the convenience stores to fuel

28:55

up on sugar. One day

28:57

we show up and there

29:00

is this gray bottle

29:03

and it just says, okay on it. It was

29:05

kind of this weird blend of really kind of

29:08

strange art that you never really seen

29:10

on a soda before. One

29:12

of the cans has a person sitting on

29:14

a rock with a cloud above their head

29:16

that's supposed to usually say something, but it's

29:18

empty. Right, they included the word beverage in

29:20

quotation marks on the packaging. I

29:23

was like, what is this? This

29:25

is crazy. It had this

29:28

really funky, fruity soda, cola,

29:31

Dr. Pepper, like it tasted wild.

29:34

So from that day we would buy a

29:36

ridiculous amount of soda and that's

29:39

when we discovered the 1-800 number on the bottle.

29:43

Due to the controversial nature of this

29:45

product, a toll-free number has been established

29:48

to handle stories regarding its consumption. That

29:50

number is 1-800, I feel okay. We

29:53

called that number, I don't know Matt, maybe. A

30:00

million times that summer like we go to

30:02

the one payphone in town and just hog

30:04

that payphone all day calling that one hundred

30:07

number Leaving

30:09

the craziest most rambling messages and dusty

30:12

and Matt were not alone Yeah,

30:16

I was drinking okay, soda Like

30:20

everything had to be okay for the day Color

30:23

seemed a lot brighter to that

30:25

toll free line we were getting Million

30:28

calls a week high school principals were calling the

30:30

company because they said kids are in the skipping

30:32

class to hang out on our payphones I

30:34

drink It's

30:42

like oh, it's caught on up here these

30:44

people understand it even better than we do And

30:49

I drink okay, and then I can read my

30:51

dog's mind They determined

30:53

that if you called 1-800 I

30:57

feel okay if you called it one time you

30:59

called back an average of eight more

31:01

times It was

31:03

like crashing 18 key servers

31:06

people Will the next

31:09

the Wyden and Kennedy team began hatching

31:11

a plan to launch an okay Soda

31:13

website the first ever website for a

31:15

coke product an early use net group

31:18

popped up on the internet for fans

31:20

of the cans Design and okay sold

31:22

a million units in just seven test

31:24

markets if we had been a startup we would have

31:27

been high-fiving But As

31:30

Brian Lanahan knows as well as anyone

31:32

okay, soda was not a startup coke

31:35

wanted a billion dollar brand ASAP And

31:37

they didn't have the patience to noodle

31:39

around with okay, soda Even

31:41

though there was one fundamental aspect

31:43

that needed work We

31:46

kind of just had some anecdotal data

31:48

coming in that this was a bad

31:50

tasting drink Like maybe

31:53

the chemists had succeeded a little too

31:55

well, and they're not entirely serious brief

31:57

to make an ironic beverage Peter

31:59

Wagner The copywriter decided to do

32:01

his own investigating, going to a local

32:04

Portland 7-Eleven to see how O.K. Soda

32:06

was doing. And what

32:08

I found was three or four

32:11

liter containers that

32:14

had a couple of gulps

32:16

taken from them, not more, and then they dished them

32:18

off. So I just

32:20

think people didn't like the way

32:22

it tasted. Even O.K.

32:24

Soda superfans, Matt and Dustin, couldn't

32:27

sell their friends on it. Blake, you guys

32:29

gotta try this. It's the best thing. No,

32:31

no, they hated it. Almost

32:34

every single person involved with O.K.

32:36

Soda thinks there was something wrong

32:38

with the taste. Though it's not

32:41

quite as simple as it just tasting bad.

32:44

Because there are bad tasting drinks that

32:46

succeed. Think about the syrupy

32:48

slick of an energy drink like a Red

32:50

Bull. In a vacuum, it doesn't taste that

32:52

good. At least not to

32:55

me. But what it does do

32:57

is justify why. It's a quasi-medicinal

32:59

product that's giving you energy. And

33:01

in that context, you can

33:04

tolerate, even appreciate, the cloying,

33:06

thick taste. It gives

33:08

you a framework for understanding what

33:10

you're drinking. The question that people

33:12

asked was, what does it taste like?

33:16

Todd Waterberry, the designer on the project. And

33:18

being able to say, oh, it's

33:21

a cooler, spicier version of

33:23

root beer. Oh, O.K. Or

33:26

it's this orange soda that's super zesty

33:28

or has like caffeine in it. Oh,

33:31

I have a reference point for

33:34

it. But O.K. Soda

33:36

didn't provide a reference point. It

33:39

didn't say it tastes like being

33:41

mischievous at the soda fountain. It

33:43

didn't say it tastes like not caring about

33:45

what you drink. So you drink everything at

33:48

once. This was in part

33:50

a knock on effect of the backwards development

33:52

process. For a long time, Peter and Charlotte

33:54

and Todd didn't know what the taste was.

33:58

It may also have been a hangover.

34:00

from new Coke and the idea that

34:02

taste wasn't that important. But

34:05

the other thing happening here

34:07

is that selling people on

34:09

the soda, the liquid, was

34:11

antithetical to OK Soda's whole

34:13

promise, which was to

34:15

cut the bullshit. It was

34:18

never about what was in the can. I

34:21

mean, it's sugar water. It's

34:23

not a boon to civilization. Even

34:26

as the problems with the taste became

34:28

clearer, all that was added to the

34:30

cans was a circle describing it as

34:32

a unique fruity beverage. And

34:35

its own winking ads couldn't fully commit

34:37

to saying what it tasted like. Amber

34:40

C. thinks it's a mixture of

34:42

many different soft drinks. Humane D.

34:44

feels it's a tea-slash-citrus combination. To

34:46

top W, it's carbonated pre-set. All

34:49

point to the feeling of volcanoes that may result.

34:53

By mid-1995, Sergio Zeman,

34:55

the Coke executive who kicked all of

34:57

this off, was having doubts about

34:59

OK Soda's future. It's

35:01

not doing well. I mean, it's doing OK, right?

35:04

But it's not doing well. So he says

35:06

he had the super agent, Michael Ovets,

35:08

assemble a panel of A-listers for him.

35:11

Zeman says it included Danny DeVito, Penny

35:14

Marshall, and Jerry Seinfeld, whose

35:16

publicist did not respond to

35:18

my request for comment. And

35:21

Sergio says he presented OK Soda to all

35:23

of them. So we go through

35:25

the whole thing, and then Seinfeld

35:27

says to me, it's never going to

35:29

work. And I go, oh,

35:32

tell me more. Zeman says

35:35

Seinfeld talked to him about the structure

35:37

of a joke. He explained that

35:39

you've got a set up, a delivery, and

35:41

a punchline. And according to

35:43

Zeman, Seinfeld said OK Soda was

35:45

set up all wrong.

35:48

He says, so you're coming here telling me

35:50

that this is the greatest suffering in the

35:52

history of the world. And then

35:54

when somebody says, so how is it? People

35:57

say, OK. Seinfeld

36:00

had honed right in on the contradiction

36:02

that had been there from the minute

36:04

OK Soda got its name. Was

36:07

it supposed to be the world's greatest

36:09

beverage, globally popular and widely known? Or

36:12

was it supposed to be an ironic

36:14

self-aware brand for people delighted to see

36:16

a soda owning up to the truth

36:19

that soda was nothing special? Sergio

36:22

Zeman knew which one he thought was

36:24

the answer. He immediately got on

36:26

a plane back to headquarters and

36:29

once he was there he says

36:34

he went up the elevator to talk to the

36:36

CEO. And I tell him this story about Sergio

36:39

and he looks at me and he

36:41

says I agree with you I think we better kill

36:43

it and we killed OK Soda. In

36:48

1995, just a year after

36:51

it launched, Coke started pulling OK Soda

36:53

from the shelves. Coke

36:55

did not ultimately want to

36:57

be in the business of making a

36:59

niche product for people who wanted to

37:01

roll their eyes about soda unless

37:04

it was going to be an out of the

37:06

park home run. And OK Soda was

37:08

not. And this is

37:11

not I don't think just because Coke's

37:13

expectations for it were off kilter

37:15

or too high. It's

37:18

because Seinfeld was right. OK

37:20

Soda was an in-balance

37:23

joke and not just to

37:25

the suits at Coke, to

37:27

the customer too. They

37:29

experienced the setup, the spectacularly

37:32

strange marketing, the twisted zen slogans,

37:34

the cans that looked like zines,

37:36

the 1-800 number. They

37:39

experienced a brand that was if they

37:41

were the right kind of person, extraordinary.

37:44

And then they

37:46

bought it, popped it open and

37:49

tasted the ordinary

37:51

rusty colored sugar

37:53

water inside. And

37:56

it fell flat. It

37:58

really was just just to

38:00

soda. After

38:04

OK Soda was killed, the team that

38:06

made it disbanded. Brian Lannahan,

38:08

the Koch emissary on the project, realized he was

38:10

never going to work on anything else as interesting

38:12

if he stayed at the company. And

38:14

besides, he and Robin Janitas, the wide

38:17

Ben Kennedy employee who'd gotten the call

38:19

about Project X, realized there might be

38:21

something going on between them. So I

38:23

quit Koch and came out to Portland and

38:25

to hang out with her. Hey,

38:27

I actually met the person who changed my

38:29

life through this. She's now

38:32

Robin Lannahan. Our kids have

38:34

OK Soda t-shirts and they walk

38:36

around with them and people stop them everywhere

38:38

and ask about them. So we've lasted longer than

38:40

OK Soda, so you could say it changed my life

38:42

for sure. Their children's names

38:44

both start with the letter O, and

38:46

that's not a coincidence. Todd

38:49

Waterbury, the designer, moved on to Target,

38:51

where he is the chief creative officer.

38:54

Charlotte Moore, the art director, has had a long

38:56

career as a creative director, and she now works

38:59

for a pasta company in Italy. Peter

39:01

Wagner did become an artist. His playful,

39:03

witty artwork has been shown in major

39:06

museums across the country, and OK Soda

39:08

was his last advertising gig. There

39:11

were definitely moments when it was

39:13

confusingly art-like, where I

39:15

felt like it kind of been given

39:17

permission to do stuff at a huge

39:20

level, reaching millions

39:22

of people. And there's

39:24

enormous response, and

39:26

I am prepared to cut the cord on

39:29

this at any moment. The

39:31

brand they all made together, its

39:33

look, sensibility, ambivalent attitude, the

39:35

Dan Clow's illustrations, remained so

39:38

distinctive that OK Soda cans

39:40

have become collectors' items, with a

39:42

six-pack going for nearly $200 on eBay. Matt

39:46

and Dusty, who fell in love with

39:48

OK Soda as kids, and who are,

39:50

I feel, obliged to point out, millennials,

39:53

or some of its leading collectors. They

39:55

even have a working OK Soda vending

39:58

machine. It, of course, has no OK

40:00

soda inside of it, but they found a

40:02

workaround. Dusty and I have taught

40:05

our kids what we think the recipe

40:07

is. Two parts Coca-Cola to

40:09

one part orange soda with

40:12

a cap of Dr. Pepper. That's about

40:14

right on. Coke, for

40:16

its part, has not launched a soft

40:18

drink from scratch since OK, opting

40:20

instead to make many different versions of

40:23

its existing products and to buy

40:25

up smaller brands. And

40:27

if you walk past the refrigerator aisle in a

40:29

convenience store or a gourmet shop these days, you

40:32

will see dozens of beverages aimed

40:34

not at a huge audience, but

40:37

just a small one trying to speak

40:39

to different niches in a voice that

40:41

resonates with them. This

40:43

is how products are sold now that the

40:45

mainstream has fractured and companies can't

40:48

reach everyone, even if they tried.

40:51

In aiming for a demographic that

40:53

really got them, OK soda was

40:55

prescient. In its interactivity, its

40:57

virality, its utter lack of concern about

40:59

selling out, and in the way its

41:01

logo looks like it could belong to

41:03

a streetwear brand, it was too.

41:06

And this makes people wonder if

41:09

OK soda could have thrived in

41:11

some other circumstance. If it wasn't

41:13

just a bizarre play from a

41:16

big company, but an idea a little

41:18

before its time. But

41:22

I think the low simmering, decades

41:24

long interest in OK only exists

41:26

because it did fail. It

41:29

was quintessentially Gen X to believe

41:31

that some things shouldn't be

41:33

sold. Only in

41:36

failing could OK soda embody

41:38

that belief. To

41:40

be the taste of Gen X, failure

41:42

was the fitting option. Success.

41:47

That's some other generation soft drink.

42:03

This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

42:05

If you have any cultural mysteries you

42:07

want us to decode, please email us

42:09

at dikoderingk at sleep.com. This

42:12

episode was written by me. It was edited

42:14

by Jenny Lawton. It was produced by me

42:16

and Katie Shepherd along with Evan Chung. Derek

42:19

John is executive producer. Merit Jacob is

42:21

senior technical director. I'd

42:23

also like to thank David Cowles, Art

42:26

Chantry, Seth Godin, Jeff Beer, Gabriel

42:28

Ross, Mark Hensley for all

42:30

of the OK Soda commercials,

42:32

and Mark Pendergrass, whose book

42:35

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

42:37

was indispensable. If you

42:39

haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our

42:41

Feed and Apple Podcasts or wherever you

42:43

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42:45

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