0:00

Taste the Mediterranean through March

0:02

19th at Whole Foods Market.

0:04

Save on animal welfare certified

0:06

bone and beef short ribs,

0:08

sustainable wild caught sockeye salmon,

0:10

and more. Find sales on

0:12

Parmigiano Reggiano, charcuterie and ground

0:14

lamb. Grab an olive boule

0:16

bread from the bakery. Plus,

0:18

wines from the Mediterranean start

0:20

at just $8.99. Taste

0:23

the Mediterranean now at Whole Foods

0:25

Market. Must be 21 plus. Please

0:28

drink responsibly. There's

0:36

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

0:38

you want it to or not. They're

0:40

called, among other things, millennials. It's

0:42

when your generation is lapped by the one

0:45

coming up behind it. Gen Z is the

0:47

next wave, and turns out there's quite a

0:49

bit that makes them uniquely them. You may

0:51

be a little skeptical about the very concept

0:54

of generations. You might think that they're just

0:56

conjured up to sell us stuff and make

0:58

us feel like we belong. It

1:01

doesn't matter. You've heard of Gen

1:03

Y, but what about Generation Alpha? The

1:06

world turns, young people get older, they

1:08

look at the new young people and say,

1:11

what's your deal? I'm a little scared what the

1:13

Alphas are going to be like as a pack.

1:17

In the early 1990s, the

1:19

generation of the moment inspired

1:22

even more head-scratching than usual.

1:24

Generation X. They

1:26

apparently feel the older baby boomers have

1:28

taken all the good jobs and all

1:30

the good real estate. They

1:32

are angst-ridden, a bit bitter, and

1:34

their chief talent seems to be

1:37

the ironic aside. The

1:39

skeptical, flannel-clad, authenticity-craving

1:42

members of Generation X had watched

1:44

the baby boomers sell out their

1:46

values, morphing from hippies to yuppies.

1:48

And they were not impressed. Everything

1:51

on TV sucks. Yeah,

1:53

yeah, yeah, that sucked. Notoriously

1:56

disdainful, Gen X was particularly put

1:58

off by money. marketing, which presented

2:00

a problem for companies trying to

2:03

sell stuff, who began

2:05

to explore novel sales pitches. And

2:08

no product from this era was

2:10

marketed with more novelty than

2:12

one from Coca-Cola. What

2:16

exactly is OK? A

2:18

carbonated beverage. Why

2:20

the quotation marks around beverage to

2:23

make it more special. What

2:25

makes it so special? The OK-ness

2:27

of it. OK

2:29

soda was a soft drink that sold itself

2:32

by underselling itself, an attitude that was right

2:34

there in its name. If the

2:36

kids were skeptical about advertising, here was

2:38

advertising that said, I know,

2:41

right? OK soda

2:43

has been criticized for marketing efforts that

2:45

exclude some people. This

2:48

wasn't a soda for everyone, just

2:51

for people in on the joke.

2:53

But even so, these ambitions were

2:55

not small. And for a brief

2:58

moment, even Coca-Cola thought a soda

3:00

promising to be just OK

3:03

just might be a

3:05

billion dollar idea. This

3:15

is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. 30 years

3:19

ago, OK soda arrived in

3:21

select stores. Instead of crowing

3:23

about how spectacular it was, it offered

3:25

up a liquid shrug, a oozy

3:28

irony. It was an inside

3:30

joke of a soda for people who knew

3:32

soda wasn't cool. And it

3:34

promptly went viral and

3:36

then had to try and figure out how

3:39

to sustain itself. In

3:41

today's episode, we're going to ask

3:43

how Coca-Cola, a company predicated on

3:45

the idea that soda is more

3:48

than OK, ever bankrolled such a

3:50

project. A project that depending

3:52

on how you look at it, was

3:54

either a corporate attempt to market authenticity

3:57

or a bold send up of consumer

3:59

capital. A project that

4:01

either utterly, predictably failed, or

4:04

that surprisingly almost succeeded.

4:07

So today on Decodering, how

4:10

do you make the taste of a

4:12

generation? When

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5:10

I want to start the story of OK Soda

5:12

a couple of years before the first Gen X'er

5:14

was even born. When Coca-Cola

5:16

reigned supreme and its rival Pepsi

5:19

decided to do something about it. In

5:26

the 1860s, Pepsi began appealing directly to

5:28

young people on one side of the

5:30

so-called generation gap. And

5:37

it worked. Aligning themselves with the young

5:39

baby boomers helped Pepsi grow faster, as

5:42

did another infamous campaign. That's

5:45

why the Pepsi Challenge has been asking thousands

5:47

of people across the country to let their

5:49

own tastes decide. In ads featuring

5:51

the Pepsi Challenge, regular people blind

5:53

taste tested both colas. late

6:00

1970s, Coke was still the larger

6:02

company, but Pepsi had been gaining on

6:04

it for years. Coke needed

6:06

to shake things up. So the

6:08

president of the company took a

6:11

young, ambitious Mexican-born Pepsi employee

6:13

named Sergio Zeman out to

6:15

lunch. And he said, so what do

6:17

you think of Coke? I said, I think

6:19

you guys are incredibly

6:21

powerful and successful, and

6:24

you just squander every opportunity that

6:26

you have. So he offered me a

6:28

job. Zeman understood his new

6:30

role in very specific terms. I

6:33

got hired to challenge the status

6:35

quo. The status quo

6:37

at Coke had long been, we make

6:40

one flagship product that tastes one way.

6:43

Zeman was charged with spearheading the

6:45

first drink to challenge that.

6:47

Oh, it's new. Diet Coke. And

6:49

you're going to drink it. Diet

6:54

Coke launched in 1982. Its

6:56

success showed Coke that it

6:58

could change, while also turning Zeman

7:00

into a company wonderkind.

7:03

For his troubles, he was put on

7:05

Coke's next new top secret project. One

7:07

met to combat Pepsi's claim about

7:09

its taste. For nearly a

7:12

century, Coca-Cola has had the same distinctive

7:14

taste. Well, hold on to your hats.

7:16

It's being changed. New Coke was rolled

7:18

out with much fanfare in April of 1985

7:20

by a Coke leadership, sure it

7:25

was going to revitalize the company. What

7:27

do you think about Coke changing its formula? I

7:30

don't like it. Why not? It's

7:32

too sweet. I don't like it. I don't

7:34

like it at all. I don't understand it

7:36

because they were doing fine, I thought. They

7:38

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

7:40

wars to have a

7:42

choice, to have freedom. Something

7:45

like 75% of America says they didn't

7:47

like new Coke. But I know we're

7:50

dead. We're done. 77

7:53

days after launching New Coke, the

7:55

company backed down and reintroduced the

7:58

original Coke, now called Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola

8:00

Classic. We're really sorry

8:02

for any discontent that

8:04

we may have caused for almost three months.

8:08

And Coca-Cola Classic is truly a

8:10

celebration of loyalty. Coke

8:12

had blundered badly, and someone

8:14

was going to have to pay at the price. I

8:17

was the guy that took the blame. It

8:19

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

8:22

Coke's failure was an odd kind of failure,

8:24

though. It ended up reminding people

8:26

how much they loved the old Coke,

8:29

and the company started to gain market

8:31

share over Pepsi. So this

8:33

failure ended up being an

8:35

unwitting success, albeit one that

8:37

cost Sergio Zeman his job. It

8:40

was also one from which you could take

8:42

all sorts of lessons. And

8:44

for our purposes, I want to point at

8:46

two in particular. The first has to do

8:49

with risk. New Coke was

8:51

a huge risk that failed massively, and

8:53

yet the company not only survived, it

8:56

thrived. Someone not so

8:58

conservative could point to what happened and say, it's

9:00

not that risky to do new

9:02

things. We just lived through violently

9:04

space-planting with new Coke. What

9:07

could be risky compared to that? The

9:10

second lesson has to do with taste. One

9:13

of the ideas driving New Coke was

9:15

that taste is all important. Pepsi

9:17

was beating Coke in taste tests, so Coke

9:20

made a soda that tasted better. It

9:22

should have all been easy from there. But

9:24

it wasn't. Because what

9:26

Coke tasted like mattered less than

9:29

what Coke and the tradition of

9:31

Coke meant to people. And

9:34

I'm drawing all of this out because it

9:36

has direct bearing on the birth of OK

9:38

Soda, a risky

9:40

project dreamed up by Sergio Zeman

9:43

that began with no particular taste

9:45

at all. highly

10:00

caffeinated, anti-freeze-colored Mountain Dew.

10:03

But Coke didn't make a tea or

10:05

a seltzer, and sales of its Mountain

10:08

Dew rival, Mellow Yellow, were minuscule. Coke

10:11

again needed a change, and so

10:13

five years after he'd left the

10:15

company as the fall guy for

10:17

New Coke, Sergio Zeman was brought

10:19

back to challenge the status quo, now

10:22

as the chief marketing officer. And

10:24

Sergio thought he knew exactly what Coke

10:26

needed. I think we've got to

10:29

create a brand new sultry from scratch. Nobody

10:31

had launched a brand new sultry. Mellow

10:33

Yellow was a copy of Mountain Dew.

10:35

Powery was a copy of Gatorade. This

10:38

was a brand new something. And

10:40

he wanted to develop it in a brand

10:42

new way. We always start in

10:44

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

10:46

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

10:49

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

10:51

reverse that. Brian Lanahan was

10:53

an employee at Coca-Cola when Zeman tapped

10:55

him to become his director of special

10:57

projects. Let's go find

11:00

an idea that connects with

11:02

consumers, aka teenagers, and then

11:04

build the product to suit

11:06

the brand. Brian was the

11:08

point guy on this new undefined soft

11:10

drink, one that wouldn't start with a

11:12

taste, but with a brand custom made

11:14

for young people. And it

11:17

was unusual in another way too. This is

11:19

all, of course, top secret. Coke

11:21

loves to have, you know, secrets. The secret formula

11:23

locked in the bank vault is the wellspring of

11:25

the company. The company wanted

11:28

this new project to be secret for

11:30

a reason. Because there was a

11:32

sense of ideas got deboned as

11:34

they went up, and by the time they

11:36

got to the top, all the edges had

11:38

been honed off. Did this project have a

11:41

secret code dam? Yes, it was called Project

11:43

X. You can't believe it. In

11:50

the summer of 1993, Coke reached out to

11:52

a number of advertising agencies

11:55

about Project X, including

11:57

Wyden and Kennedy. Just do it!

12:02

Wyden and Kennedy was Nike's agency, and

12:04

like Nike, it was based in Oregon,

12:06

in Portland. Campaigns like

12:08

Just Do It and sneaker ads featuring

12:10

the Beatles song Revolution had helped it

12:13

build a reputation as one of the

12:15

hippest advertising shops in the country. They

12:17

were cooler than we were. We were like Coke.

12:21

So we wanted to be out there on the

12:23

edge of culture. And this is Coke letting its

12:25

hair down. They said to us, look, you

12:27

understand, teen boys. We're doing amazing

12:29

work for Nike. We're getting killed

12:32

by Mountain Dew. And we

12:34

need to create a drink that would be

12:36

successful as a teen boy audience. Robin

12:38

Janitis was fielding new business at Wyden and

12:41

Kennedy when Coke called. They were looking for

12:43

kind of the overnight

12:45

success billion dollar brand. So

12:47

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

12:49

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

12:52

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

12:54

why would we want to work with them? Robin

12:56

explained to Dan Wyden, her boss, that

12:58

though the project was coming from stodgy

13:01

old Coke, it was a rare opportunity

13:03

to make a brand completely

13:05

from scratch. Coke

13:07

asked Wyden and Kennedy to put together a

13:09

team dedicated to this new, unformed

13:12

brand. Well, we basically went

13:14

out to talk to teen boys and

13:16

we were asking them about their lifestyle and

13:18

what they were interested in. And there was

13:21

definitely like kind of an

13:23

air of pessimism. I think there

13:25

was this sense that brands were all about

13:27

celebrities and beautiful people. Everything

13:29

was asking them to be more than who they were.

13:32

I'm just this kid who's trying to

13:34

become an adult and trying to assemble an

13:36

identity. And all these brands are

13:38

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

13:40

to. And at one point, this one kid

13:42

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

13:45

act like they're going to change your life and really so

13:47

does just okay. For

13:49

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

13:52

if, what if soda was just okay? A

14:00

little quiet part out loud.

14:02

Soda is just. Fine.

14:06

In acknowledging this, the bread was

14:08

putting itself in cahoots with the

14:10

consumer. It was making eye contact

14:13

and winking about all the patronizing

14:15

this honest basic brands the pretend

14:17

they're so great. Brands.

14:19

That include of course, Coca

14:22

Cola itself. And

14:24

you know that's not gonna play well from

14:26

Sausage The Tower in Cook for. So.

14:28

That is Not. How they sold the name

14:30

to Cope. Instead, the official

14:33

story about where okay so does name

14:35

comes from the one you reading articles

14:37

and books hinges on a series of

14:39

connections. Between the word okay

14:41

and the word coke. Like

14:44

oh and gay or the second

14:46

and third letter in the word

14:48

coke And okay, his Coke stock

14:50

ticker symbol k O backwards. But

14:53

the most compelling connection of all

14:55

is it. apparently Cook is the

14:57

second most well known English language.

14:59

Word in the World. And.

15:02

The first. Is. The

15:04

word Okay so that that sense

15:06

of scope and scale helps bring

15:09

the idea into the building because

15:11

it sits at that languages big

15:13

business and power and worldwide effect.

15:18

So. Okay, soda had its name even if

15:20

it was a name that many different. Things

15:22

to different people now all

15:25

they had to do with

15:27

figure out every single other

15:29

details. Taste.

15:47

the mediterranean through march nineteenth

15:49

that whole foods market save

15:51

on animal welfare certified bone

15:53

in be short ribs sustainable

15:55

while that sockeye salmon and

15:57

more find sales on par

15:59

Reggiano Reggiano, charcuterie and ground

16:01

lamb, grab an olive boule

16:03

bread from the bakery, plus

16:05

wines from the Mediterranean started

16:08

just $8.99. Taste

16:10

the Mediterranean now at Whole Foods

16:12

Market. Must be 21 plus. Please

16:15

drink responsibly. At a

16:17

time when information continues to come at

16:19

us faster and faster, sometimes

16:22

you need to hit pause and

16:25

rewind. NPR's

16:30

Through Line takes you back in time to the

16:32

source of the news stories filling your seats. Find

16:35

NPR's Through Line wherever you get

16:37

your podcasts. The

16:43

core creative team tasked with making OK

16:45

Soda wasn't your typical group of marketing

16:47

suits and advertising executives. You know, you're

16:50

putting something out into someone else's space

16:52

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

16:54

going to run into it. You're kind

16:56

of polluting. Charlotte Moore was an art

16:58

director at Widening Kennedy, and she

17:00

was amused to find herself selling a soda

17:03

that promised everything would be OK. I'm

17:05

a person who never thinks that things are going to

17:07

be OK whatsoever. And so

17:09

for me personally, there was a lot

17:11

of just making fun of myself. Charlotte

17:15

was teamed up with a copywriter named Peter

17:17

Wegder, who was just as ambivalent about

17:19

advertising. It was just

17:22

a way to make money. It wasn't actually

17:24

what I set out to do. He

17:26

wanted to be an artist, and so he

17:29

would take jobs, save some money and leave.

17:31

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

17:33

but then he got a call about the

17:35

Koch Project. I was

17:37

destitute and I just had

17:39

to have work. And I remember I looked

17:41

at a job as a photo finisher. I

17:44

thought, OK, this is minimum

17:46

wage and toxic chemicals. So

17:49

I guess I'll throw my hat back in

17:51

the ring. Advertising is better than that,

17:53

basically. Yes. Let me put it

17:55

this way. It pays better. Peter and

17:57

I got along really, really well in terms of.

18:00

kind of like just batting the ideas

18:02

back and forth. You know, I

18:04

would say things to him, or vice

18:06

versa, that were completely absurd, but Peter

18:08

knew how to play with that frequency.

18:12

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

18:14

for lack of a better word, a voice,

18:17

personality, some kind of a presence. We

18:20

just went about building that. Charlotte

18:23

and Peter wanted the brand to be interactive,

18:26

but low-tech. They wanted it to

18:28

be surprising by tweaking familiar forms.

18:30

They wanted it to be intricate

18:32

and absurd. And to

18:34

make it real, they knew they

18:36

were gonna need way more than

18:38

just concepts. The role I had

18:40

as I walked in was, how

18:43

do I bring kind of shape and

18:45

voice and form to it from

18:48

a design perspective? That's Todd

18:50

Waterberry, the designer who joined the team

18:52

to handle the logo, the packaging, the

18:55

two liter bottles, the cans. And

18:57

the cans are where I want to

18:59

start looking closely at what this trio

19:01

would build, because there wasn't

19:04

just one. Ultimately, there

19:06

were seven. They were sleek and

19:08

graphic, in silver, white, red, and black,

19:10

with the okay logo slapped on like

19:13

a sticker. They had large, deadpan faces

19:15

staring out of them, including one drawn

19:17

by the now-famous graphic novelist, Dan Clowes.

19:20

They were dappled with text, and

19:22

they looked like metallic Alt Weeklys,

19:24

vending machines, zines. Some

19:26

of them would be placed in cardboard 12 packs, covered

19:29

in illustrations. But Todd

19:31

didn't stop with what was on the outside

19:33

of the box. And I had

19:35

this idea of printing on the inside of it,

19:37

so when you'd open it up, you'd want to

19:39

find out, like, what is this? In

19:41

one instance, he drew a diagram, outlining how to

19:44

turn the box into an ice cube tray. This

19:48

sort of absurd, unduly elaborate

19:50

humor was all over the

19:52

project. Okay, so does

19:54

name, might be Lacadaisical and Blase, but

19:56

in every other way, the brand was

19:58

trying hard to... Use and of

20:01

light. it's target customer with send.

20:03

Us of traditional marketing. Perhaps moral

20:05

to pseudo would make you feel

20:07

even more okay. Please note there's

20:10

no such thing as too much.

20:12

Okay miss. we

20:14

were trying to to talk to people and

20:16

a tone of voice or in or register

20:18

that. Might. Have somebody

20:21

oscar address them in a way the

20:23

hadn't been addressed before. Peter

20:25

Row and Okay Soda Manifesto The

20:27

kicked off with the line what's

20:29

the point of okay. Well.

20:32

What's the point of anything Todd

20:34

made? Okay, so to shoelaces and

20:36

Pocket T is with lines. When

20:38

the Manifesto inside of the Pockets

20:40

Charlie came up with the idea

20:42

of putting in. Okay, so the

20:44

same letter in the mail he

20:47

described oddball coincidences that the cell

20:49

people after they drank. Okay. and

20:51

then they decided to turn the

20:53

T letter idea into. A Tv

20:55

commercial work. This is a television series

20:57

of are promoting cultures And then there

20:59

was the hotline or managed to persuade

21:01

the people in Cook a poet to

21:03

do and Eight Hundred number. And I

21:06

think at that time they had no

21:08

eight hundred numbers for any of their

21:10

brands. For the answer to the old

21:12

color of it okay or blow. Or

21:15

the corporate over okay code for the

21:17

for lack of especially for you. Callers.

21:20

The one eight hundred number would

21:22

be able to use the keypad

21:24

taken Okay Soda personality inventory Assessing

21:26

their levels of okay ness, they

21:28

would be able to hear more

21:31

okay soda coincidences. Or be

21:33

put on perpetual hold or

21:35

here up home among other

21:38

delightfully ridiculous options. Are.

21:46

They would also be able to leave messages

21:48

of their own or. Things

21:51

start investing itself as

21:53

generous. As it just goes and

21:55

goes out is kind of dangerously close

21:57

to just. Amusing. Yourself,

21:59

But for. money. You were

22:01

developing this world that

22:04

became incredibly identifiable. If

22:06

you scour this world, though, there is

22:08

one thing that is not identifiable. And

22:11

it's what the soda, what the fluid

22:13

that people would put in their mouths

22:16

actually tasted like. In

22:18

fact, the only description of the

22:21

drink itself in all of this

22:23

is that it's a carbonated beverage

22:25

with the word beverage in

22:27

quotes. There is that

22:29

acknowledgement that it is just soda. It

22:32

is just what it is. This

22:34

is what made OK Soda unique. It knows

22:37

it's just a soda, and that's kind of

22:39

respectful and refreshing. There

22:42

was, however, a more pragmatic reason

22:44

the soda itself was barely mentioned

22:46

in any of the zany materials

22:48

the team was developing. And

22:51

it said it didn't have a taste

22:53

yet. The

23:04

history of HIV and AIDS is the history

23:06

of people who were told to stay out

23:08

of sight and who refused. Gay

23:11

men, but also injection drug users,

23:13

women and, yes, children who contracted

23:15

the virus. Join us

23:17

for the series, Blind Spot, The Plague in

23:19

the Shadows. How much pain

23:22

could have been avoided had we

23:24

paid attention sooner? And what lessons

23:26

could we have learned from History

23:28

Channel and WNYC Studios? Listen wherever

23:30

you get podcasts. So

23:39

you'll recall OK Soda was developed in

23:41

a new way. Brand first,

23:44

then the liquid. Don't start in

23:46

the lab, start out in the

23:48

field. You'll also recall

23:50

that OK Soda was developed in secret

23:52

so it could stay weird. But now

23:55

it's time to stop keeping the secret

23:57

in order to develop the soda itself.

24:00

I remember our first meeting with the technical folks, they

24:02

have their own building in the Coke complex and they

24:04

wear white coats. They're almost like the high priests and

24:07

priestesses of Coca-Cola. Brian Lanahan, the Coke

24:09

employee, was part of the OK team.

24:12

And we sat down with the head of technical and he goes, OK,

24:15

what do you want me to make? What should

24:17

the drink taste like? Peter Wegner,

24:19

the copywriter, was there too. And

24:21

I said, ironic. And he just

24:24

looked at it. He

24:26

wasn't amused, but the idea of, you know... The

24:28

taste of irony. Peter Exactly. There in lies the

24:30

problem as we had gotten so far into the

24:32

idea that it was like, how do we pin

24:34

it to something you're going to buy and drink?

24:37

Thus began a long belabored process

24:39

in which OK soda had to

24:41

become a soda. The

24:43

team had some ideas. Ironic might be

24:45

a difficult flavor profile, but OK soda

24:48

was not supposed to be a regular

24:50

soda. It was supposed to be for

24:52

people who got it. Maybe it

24:54

should be less sugary. Maybe it shouldn't

24:57

be carbonated. Maybe it should be sold

24:59

in smaller batches in smaller non-chain stores.

25:02

Maybe it should be put out by a

25:04

company with a different name that was just

25:06

owned by Coca-Cola. Peter Of course, none of

25:09

that fit with the scale that Coke wanted

25:11

to bring to this because they saw the

25:13

idea as like, this is the second most

25:15

understood word in the world. We can have

25:17

this everywhere and we'll sell millions, you know.

25:20

Peter Ultimately, they landed on a drink

25:22

with a reddish-brown color and a taste

25:25

that already was kind of everywhere.

25:27

We ended up choosing a product that was

25:29

based on what's called a suicide, which is

25:31

a nickname for when teenagers are at Burger

25:33

King or McDonald's and they take a squirt

25:35

down the fountain line and they take some

25:38

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

25:40

it all up. In taste

25:42

tests in the lab, people seemed to like

25:44

it and the project started to gain momentum.

25:48

Coke had wanted a soda that wasn't

25:50

conventional or created by committee and now

25:52

OK soda was just about the weirdest

25:54

drink they'd ever made. They

25:56

were thrilled. Peter The Excitement around the

25:59

idea. Cause it to just

26:01

get put on this fast train. you know,

26:03

into the Coke system. And the

26:05

cook system did with a Coke system

26:07

does it. Took this odd ball during

26:10

aimed at a stand offish and selective

26:12

audience and tried to treat it like

26:14

Coke. So for example,

26:17

cooks lawyers looked into trade

26:19

marking the phrase things are

26:21

going to be okay. And

26:23

in the run up to it's release, Okay

26:25

Soda was featured in Time Magazine. Serious

26:27

prestigious, lots of eyeballs, but.

26:30

Not exactly the bible of. America's

26:32

Youth. Then Coke introduced it

26:34

to journalist and investors and a

26:37

lunches at the Four Seasons in

26:39

New York and started running wall

26:41

to wall print radio and Tv

26:43

advertisements in the spring of Ninety

26:45

Ninety Four. As the soda was

26:47

released in seven test markets including

26:50

Seattle asked in Boston and Little

26:52

Rock, Coke predicted okay, so that

26:54

would become a one billion. Dollar

26:56

brand So we went from

26:58

com of this edge of

27:01

culture idea to this is

27:03

gonna be the biggest thing

27:05

since coke that sounds like

27:07

a jinx but somehow. It

27:10

wasn't. Loved. It like

27:12

the flavor of it was nothing like I have

27:14

ever tasted before. That. Doesn't mess.

27:16

He spent the summer of Ninety Ninety

27:19

Four biking and rollerblading around his home

27:21

town in West or Minnesota. Just

27:23

as the print the pressure of override

27:25

the town is eight of very small.

27:28

We have roughly about seventeen hundred people

27:30

have already when this was happening so

27:32

I would have been of right around

27:34

thirty yards in your your because of

27:37

he songs over twelve. That

27:39

se cousin Matt purring ten. Matt

27:41

would come for the summer, but two weeks

27:43

those summers, those are the best source of

27:46

all time. The cousin spend their

27:48

days outside often stopping it one of the

27:50

convenience stores to fuel up on sugar. One.

27:53

Day was show up. And. There

27:55

is this. Gray. Bottles.

27:58

And as a says okay. on it. It

28:00

was kind of this weird blend of really kind

28:03

of strange art that you've never really seen

28:05

on a soda before. You know one of

28:08

the cans has a person sitting on a

28:10

rock with a cloud above their head that's

28:12

supposed to usually say something but it's empty.

28:14

Right they included the word beverage in quotation

28:16

marks on the packaging. I was

28:19

like what what is this?

28:21

This is crazy. It had

28:23

this really funky like fruity

28:25

soda cola Dr.

28:27

Pepper like it tasted wild.

28:29

So from that day we would buy

28:32

a ridiculous amount of soda and

28:34

that's when we discovered the the 1-800

28:36

number on the bottle. Due

28:39

to the controversial nature of this

28:41

product a toll-free number has been

28:44

established to handle stories regarding its

28:46

consumption. That number is 1-800 I

28:48

feel okay. We encourage you to

28:50

repost the good things that happen when you drink

28:52

okay. We called that number I

28:54

don't know Matt maybe a million

28:56

times that summer like we go to the

28:59

one payphone in town and just hog that

29:01

payphone all day calling that 1-800 number and

29:04

leaving the craziest most rambling messages.

29:07

And Dusty and

29:09

Matt were not alone. Yeah

29:11

I was drinking okay soda

29:14

and like everything tried to be

29:16

okay for the day. Color seemed

29:19

a lot brighter too. That toll-free

29:21

line we were getting like a million calls

29:23

a week. High school principals were calling the

29:25

company because they said kids are in the

29:27

skipping class to hang out on our payphones.

29:30

I drank okay cola. I

29:32

came up with this song. Like

29:38

oh it's caught on that beer. These

29:40

people understand it even better than we

29:42

do. Hi this is Linda from Denver

29:44

and I drink okay and then I

29:46

can read my dog's mind. They determined

29:49

that if you called 1-800 I

29:51

feel okay. If you called it

29:53

one time you called back

29:56

an average of eight more times. It

29:59

was like crashing. 18

30:01

key servers, people went

30:03

bananas. The Wyden and

30:05

Kennedy team began hatching a plan to

30:08

launch an OK Soda website. The first

30:10

ever website for a Coke product. An

30:12

early Usenet group popped up on the internet

30:15

for fans of the can's design. And

30:17

OK sold a million units in just

30:19

seven test markets. If we had been a

30:22

startup, we would have been high-fiving. But

30:26

as Brian Lanahan knows as well as

30:28

anyone, OK Soda was not a startup.

30:30

Coke wanted a billion dollar brand ASAP

30:32

and they didn't have the patience to

30:35

noodle around with OK Soda. Even

30:37

though there was one fundamental aspect

30:39

that needed work. We

30:42

kind of just had some anecdotal

30:44

data coming in that this was

30:46

a bad tasting drink. Like

30:48

maybe the chemists had succeeded a little

30:50

too well and they're not entirely serious

30:52

brief to make an ironic beverage. Peter

30:55

Wegner, the copywriter, decided to do

30:57

his own investigating. Going to a

30:59

local Portland 7-Eleven to see how

31:01

OK Soda was doing. And what

31:04

I found was three or

31:06

four liter

31:08

containers that had

31:10

a couple of gulps taken

31:12

from them, not more. And then they dished them on.

31:15

So I just think people didn't

31:17

like the way it tasted. Even

31:20

OK Soda superfans, Matt and Dustin,

31:22

couldn't sell their friends on it. Like,

31:24

you guys got to try this. It's the best

31:26

thing. No, no, they hated it. Almost

31:30

every single person involved with OK

31:32

Soda thinks there was something wrong

31:34

with the taste. Though it's

31:36

not quite as simple as it just tasting

31:38

bad. Because there are bad

31:41

tasting drinks that succeed. Think

31:43

about the syrupy slick of an energy

31:45

drink like a Red Bull. In a

31:47

vacuum, it doesn't taste that good. At

31:49

least not to me. But what it

31:51

does do is justify why. It's

31:53

a quasi medicinal product that's giving

31:55

you energy. And in that context,

31:58

you can tolerate even a. appreciate

32:00

the cloying, thick taste.

32:03

It gives you a framework for

32:05

understanding what you're drinking. The question

32:07

that people asked was, what does it

32:10

taste like? Todd

32:12

Waterberry, the designer on the project. And being

32:14

able to say, oh, it's

32:17

a cooler, spicier version of

32:19

root beer. Oh, okay. Or

32:22

it's this orange soda that's super zesty

32:24

or has like caffeine in it. Oh,

32:27

I have a, I have a reference point for

32:30

it. But okay, soda

32:32

didn't provide a reference point. It

32:34

didn't say it tastes like being

32:36

mischievous at the soda fountain. It

32:39

didn't say it tastes like not caring about

32:41

what you drink. So you drink everything at

32:43

once. This was in part

32:46

a knock on effect of the backwards

32:48

development process. For a long time, Peter

32:50

and Charlotte and Todd didn't know what

32:52

the taste was. It

32:54

may also have been a hangover from

32:56

new Coke and the idea that taste

32:58

wasn't that important. But the

33:01

other thing happening here is

33:03

that selling people on the

33:05

soda, the liquid, was antithetical

33:07

to okay, soda's whole promise,

33:11

which was to cut the bullshit. It

33:13

was never about what was in the

33:15

can. I mean, it's, it's sugar

33:17

water. It's not a boon

33:20

to civilization. Even as

33:22

the problems with the taste became clearer,

33:24

all that was added to the cans

33:26

was a circle describing it as a

33:28

unique fruity beverage. And its

33:31

own winking ads couldn't fully commit to

33:33

saying what it tasted like. Amber

33:36

C. thinks it's a mixture of many

33:38

different soft drinks. Domain D. feels it's

33:40

a key slash citrus combination. To Todd

33:42

W., it's carbonated 3-7.

33:44

All point to the feeling of okayness that

33:47

may result. By

33:49

mid 1995, Sergio Zeman, the Coke

33:51

executive who'd kicked all of this off,

33:54

was having doubts about okay,

33:56

soda's future. It's not doing well.

33:58

I mean, it's doing okay. Right? But it's

34:00

not doing well. So he says he

34:03

had the super agent, Michael Ovidts, assemble

34:05

a panel of A-listers for him. Zeeman

34:07

says it included Danny DeVito, Penny

34:10

Marshall, and Jerry Seinfeld, whose

34:12

publicists did not respond to

34:14

my request for comment. And

34:16

Sergio says he presented OK Soda to all

34:18

of them. So we go through

34:21

the whole thing, and then Seinfeld

34:23

says to me, it's never going

34:25

to work. And I go, oh,

34:28

tell me more. Zeeman says

34:30

Seinfeld talked to him about the structure

34:32

of a joke. He explained

34:35

that you've got a set up, a

34:37

delivery and a punchline. And according to

34:39

Zeeman, Seinfeld said OK Soda was set

34:41

up all wrong.

34:44

He says, so you're coming here telling me

34:46

that this is the greatest suffering in the

34:48

history of the world. And then when somebody

34:51

says, so how is it, people say, OK.

34:56

Seinfeld had honed right in on the contradiction

34:58

that had been there from the minute OK

35:00

Soda got its name. Was

35:02

it supposed to be the world's greatest

35:05

beverage, globally popular and widely known? Or

35:07

was it supposed to be an ironic

35:10

self-aware brand for people delighted to see

35:12

a soda owning up to the truth

35:14

that soda was nothing special? Sergio

35:17

Zeeman knew which one he thought was

35:20

the answer. It should

35:22

have been named Extraordinary or

35:25

Fantastic. He immediately got on

35:27

a plane back to headquarters. And once he was there,

35:29

he says he went up the elevator to talk to

35:31

the CEO. And I tell him this

35:33

story about Seinfeld. And he looks at

35:35

me and he says, I agree

35:38

with you. I think we're going to kill it. And

35:40

we killed OK Soda. In

35:44

1995, just a year after

35:46

it launched, Coke started pulling OK Soda

35:49

from the shelves. Coke did

35:51

not ultimately want to be in

35:53

the business of making a niche product

35:55

for people who wanted to roll their

35:58

eyes about soda. unless

36:00

it was going to be an out of the park home run.

36:03

And OK Soda was not. And

36:06

this is not, I don't think, just because

36:08

Coke's expectations for it were off

36:11

kilter or too high. It's

36:13

because Seinfeld was right. OK

36:16

Soda was an imbalanced

36:18

joke. And not just to

36:20

the suits at Coke, to

36:22

the customer, too. They

36:25

experienced the setup, the spectacularly

36:27

strange marketing, the twisted Zen

36:30

slogans, the cans that looked like zines, the

36:32

1-800 number. They

36:34

experienced a brand that was, if they

36:37

were the right kind of person, extraordinary.

36:41

And then they bought it, popped it open,

36:44

and tasted the ordinary

36:46

rusty colored sugar water

36:49

inside. And

36:51

it fell flat. It

36:53

really was just a soda. After

36:59

OK Soda was killed, the team that

37:02

made it disbanded. Brian Lanahan,

37:04

the Coke emissary on the project, realized he was

37:06

never going to work on anything else as interesting

37:08

if he stayed at the company. And

37:10

besides, he and Robyn Janitas, the wide

37:12

Ben Kennedy employee who'd gotten the call

37:14

about Project X, realized there might

37:17

be something going on between them. So

37:19

I quit Coke and came out to Portland

37:21

and to hang out with her. Hey,

37:23

I actually met the person who changed

37:25

my life through this. She's

37:27

now Robyn Lanahan. Our

37:30

kids have OK Soda t-shirts. And

37:32

they walk around with them and people stop them everywhere

37:34

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

37:37

OK Soda. So you could say it changed my

37:39

life for sure. Their children's names both

37:41

start with the letter O, and

37:43

that's not a coincidence. Todd

37:45

Waterbury, the designer, moved onto Target, where

37:48

he is the chief creative officer. Charlotte

37:51

Moore, the art director, has had a

37:53

long career as a creative director, and she

37:55

now works for a pasta company in Italy. He

37:57

did become an artist, his playful witty art.

38:00

artwork has been shown in major museums across

38:02

the country. And O.K. Soda

38:04

was his last advertising gig. There

38:07

were definitely moments when it was

38:09

confusingly art-like, where I

38:11

felt like God have been given permission to

38:13

do stuff at a huge

38:15

level, reaching millions

38:17

of people. And there's

38:20

enormous response. And

38:22

I am prepared to cut the cord on

38:24

this at any moment. The

38:27

brand they all made together, its

38:29

look, sensibility, ambivalent attitude, the Dan

38:31

Clow's illustrations, remained so distinctive that

38:33

O.K. Soda cans have become collector's

38:36

items, with a six-pack going for

38:38

nearly $200 on eBay. Matt

38:42

and Dusty, who fell in love with

38:44

O.K. Soda as kids, and who are,

38:46

I feel, obliged to point out, millennials,

38:49

or some of its leading collectors. They

38:51

even have a working O.K. Soda vending

38:54

machine. It, of course, has no

38:56

O.K. Soda inside of it, but they've found

38:58

a workaround. Dusty and I have taught

39:00

our kids, like, what we think the

39:02

recipe is. Two parts Coca-Cola

39:05

to one part orange soda with

39:07

a cap of Dr. Pepper. That's about

39:10

right on. Coke, for

39:12

its part, has not launched a soft

39:14

drink from scratch since O.K., opting

39:16

instead to make many different versions of

39:18

its existing products and to buy

39:21

up smaller brands. And

39:23

if you walk past the refrigerator aisle in a

39:25

convenience store or a gourmet shop these days, you

39:27

will see dozens of beverages aimed

39:30

not at a huge audience, but

39:33

just a small one, trying to speak

39:35

to different niches in a voice that

39:37

resonates with them. This

39:39

is how products are sold now that the

39:41

mainstream has fractured and companies can't

39:44

reach everyone, even if they tried.

39:46

In aiming for a demographic that

39:48

really got them, O.K. Soda was

39:50

prescient. In its interactivity, its

39:53

virality, its utter lack of concern about

39:55

selling out, and in the way its

39:57

logo looks like it could belong to

39:59

a street- brand, it was too.

40:02

And this makes people wonder

40:04

if OK Soda could have

40:06

thrived in some other circumstance.

40:09

If it wasn't just a bizarre play

40:11

from a big company, but an idea

40:13

a little before its time. But

40:18

I think the low simmering, decades-long

40:20

interest in OK only exists because

40:22

it did fail. It

40:25

was quintessentially Gen X to believe

40:27

that some things shouldn't be

40:29

sold. Only in

40:31

failing could OK Soda

40:34

embody that belief. To

40:36

be the taste of Gen X, failure

40:38

was the fitting option. Success.

40:42

That's some other generation soft drink.

40:46

OK, it's a feeling that

40:48

everyone loves. Unlike being

40:50

cold and not having

40:52

gloves. Thank you. I'd

41:15

also like to thank David Cowles, Art Chantry, Seth Godin, Jeff

41:17

Beer, Gabriel Ross, Mark

41:25

Hensley for all of the OK

41:27

Soda commercials, and Mark Pendergrass, whose

41:30

book for God, Country and Coca-Cola

41:32

was indispensable. If

41:34

you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate

41:36

our Feed and Apple podcasts or wherever

41:38

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41:45

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