Fad Pack Question 2

OK Soda

International market research done by The Coca-Cola Company in the late 1980s revealed that "Coke" was the second most recognizable word across all languages in the world. The first word was "OK."

OK Soda was a soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1994 that aggressively courted the Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics.

It did not sell well in select test markets, most soda drinkers found the taste blandly unappealing, and OK Soda never captured more than 3% of the beverage market in any of the target locations, the project was cancelled by Coca-Cola just seven months after its kickoff, and the soda was never widely released to the public. OK Soda had a more "citric" taste than traditional colas, almost like a Fruit Punch version of Coke's Fresca. Some reviewers described it as "slightly spicy". Others likened it to a combination of orange soda and flat Coca-Cola.

OK Soda has been remembered more for its unique advertising campaign than for its fruity flavor. Their slogan was "Things are going to be OK." OK Soda had several 800 numbers (1–800–I–FEEL–OK and 1–800–4–OK–SODA) that you could call and leave messages. The hotline received millions of calls from curious teenagers, but ultimately did little to actually promote the sale of the soda. One of the options from the automated phone menu was to hear "Real Artificial Bird Calls". If you selected this option you would hear the actor twirp, chirp, warble and otherwise imitate birds in his chipper yet deadpan, smarmy voice.

Both the cans and the print advertisements for the soda featured work by popular Fantagraphics cartoonists Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns, known for their low-key and blandly realistic style. Unlike the brightly colored Coca-Cola cans, they were decorated in drab shades of grey, with occasions of red text. In addition to the primarily two-tone illustrations, the cans would feature a special code that could be entered at the given 800 number as well as a "Coincidence", which was usually some odd bit of trivia about some town in the United States. They would also sometimes contain messages from the OK Manifesto, which was a series of platitudes about OK-Ness, pithy thought reform sayings with no real meaning, much in the style of doublespeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four, mocking traditional advertisement slogans or catch-phrases. Some cans had similar messages printed on their inside.

OK Soda was only marketed in select areas, representing different demographic areas during the summer of 1994. Some of the testing locations were: Austin, Texas, Boston, Massachusetts, Denver, Colorado, Portland, Oregon, Providence, Rhode Island, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, Sacramento, California, Seattle, Washington, Atlantic Canada.