The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson Page B

believer in the ‘if it ain’t broke, fix it anyway’ school of thought, but what happened with the ill-fated introduction of ‘New Coke’ was, as someone described it at the time, ‘Like trying to improve the Mona Lisa’s smile by painting over it.’ On 23 April 1985 – a date that will forever ever live in fizzy drink infamy – Coca-Cola surprised the planet by suddenly introducing their ‘New Coke’ and simultaneously ceased production of the original formulation. This was no ordinary drink they were messing around with – I read somewhere once that 10,000 Cokes are consumed around the world every second of every day! With that kind of a following it was hardly surprising that the reaction around the Coke-drinking world to the New Coke’s coming was nothing short of seismic.
    It was a textbook case of just how flawed a strategy it can be to place too much reliance on assuming the customer knows what they want. The guys in the white lab coats at Coke had conducted extensive blind taste tests with existing customers and others, all of whom had apparently indicated a strong acceptance (if not necessarily a preference) for the planned New Coke’s slightly sweeter formulation. Of course, these tests had been conducted in somewhat of a vacuum and none of those contributing to the shocking result had been asked, ‘We are glad you like this, now how would you feel about it replacing the Coca-Cola that you’ve loved all your life?’
    The stunned consumer response was, to put it mildly, ‘not pretty’. The company HQ in Atlanta was deluged with hundreds of thousands of calls and letters expressing utter disgust from global Coke drinkers. To a person they not only didn’t like the new taste but also felt betrayed that the decision to go ahead and change their favourite drink had been taken without any open consultation process. Many felt that at the very least the old and new versions should have been offered side by side on supermarket shelves for a time so that consumers could have made their own choice.
    As a fan of well-written complaint letters (even when addressed to me) I have to say that some of those received by Coca-Cola should be enshrined in a ‘Hall of Shame’ somewhere. Coke’s CEO Roberto Goizueta was inevitably singled out as the villain of the piece and ‘Coca-Colass CEO’ and ‘Chief Dodo’ were two of the more polite forms of address taken by angry letter writers. One missive even asked the embattled executive for his signature on the grounds that ‘The autograph of one of the dumbest executives in American business history will likely become valuable some day.’ Even a few offshore fans chimed in – from Cuba, life-long Coke drinker Fidel Castro dubbed the misadventure as, ‘A sign of American decadence.’ Of course, he was probably thinking, ‘How can I have a Cuba Libre without Coke?’
    It turned out that Castro’s much-publicised comment only served to get CEO Goizueta into more hot water, this time from his own father. He later recounted how his dad, a Cuban who had fled his homeland to get away from Castro, told his son in no uncertain terms that he had screwed up big time. But the classic capper to this story was when he reportedly said, ‘Roberto, I think this is the only time in my life that I have agreed with something Fidel Castro had to say.’
    Now I am not suggesting that soliciting the input of foreign dictators is necessarily the way to go, but when you have family and friends who are also consumers, it is downright foolish not to take full advantage and listen to their outside-in points of view.
    THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS . . . RELEVANT
    Please don’t think that by promoting outside-in vision I am suggesting that the customer is always right – far from it. In fact, in my experience, particularly with anything that represents a really game-changing innovation, I believe that most consumer opinions tend to be overly cautious and tempered by what they have or