Ok Soda Goes Flat On Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola, which began test marketing OK Soda last summer as a hip, fruity beverage aimed at teens and twentysomethings, says it is burying the brand because it never caught on.

“We didn’t generate enough profitable volume to continue it,” said Coke spokesman Randy Donaldson.

Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a beverage consultant, put it another way: “It didn’t become the drink of Generation X, which is a market very resistant to having messages pitched directly at it.” It is also a market that doesn’t necessarily believe everything will be OK.

“It had too much older, existential angst,” Pirko said The taste, which one critic described as “slightly flat Coke mixed with orange soda,” didn’t help much either.