Marketing is more than the product itself

All of us are well aware of the success story of Coke. But how many of us know about its failure, dubbed as the 'biggest blunder' in the history.some theorists even go so far as to say that the whole thing had been planned as a deliberate marketing ploy to reaffirm public affection for Coca-Cola. Now you must be thinking what blunder am I talking about??????.......
Here goes the story...................
....Coke undoubtedly was the biggest stakeholder in the Cola market. But its number one position was facing a threat from Pepsi.
In 1950s Coke had outsold Pepsi by a ratio of more than five to one. However, Pepsi during the next decade repositioned its image as a youth brand. By doing so it took amajor risk;risk of loosing the older-aged peoples' segment. But, the risk paid off, Pepsi became successful in marginalising the ratio between Coke and itself and was claiming a stake for an increased market share. A number of public tests conducted by Pepsi showed that people preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi as compared to that of Coke.....another cause of cocern for Coke. Moreover, another reason for Cokes market share outnumbering that of Pepsi was the vast distribution network of Coke and the presence of larger number of vending machines of Coke. Else given a choice between Coke and Pepsi(in the same shop), people preferred to have Pepsi if it was available. Seeing the vulnerability of its number one position Coke adopted 'flanking strategy', by introducing Diet-coke, to retain its market share. Diet-Coke was closer in taste to Pepsi and besides eating Pepsis' market share it also ate up cokes market share(as was expected). Coke found its market share at a staggering 24%.
After this Coke ended up deciding that fault remained not with its marketing startegy but with the product itself and hence it started working towards anew formula. The results were overwhelming in terms of taste and finally, in 1985, it launched the New-coke.
After the launch of New-Coke, US population decided to boycott it. Throughout most of the last century,Coca-cola had capitalized on its 'original' status in various advertising campaigns claiming Coke to be "the real thing". By launching New-Coke, it was contradicting itself. The contradictory marketing message was accentuated by the fact that since1982, Cokes strapline had been 'Coke is it'. Now it was telling consumers that they had got it wrong as if they had discovered Coke 'wasn't' it, rather New-coke was instead. To confine the brands significance to a question of taste was therefore completely misguided.
It soon beacame evident that Coca-cola had to bring backits flagship brand and formula and it did do by relaunching old Coke, redubbed 'Classic coke'.
In the words of Jack Trout "marketing is a battle of perceptions, not PRODUCT'.