NP: Tsar, Band-Girls-Money

Changing gears completely, I would now like to discuss soft drinks.

Pepsi seems to have poured (no pun intended, really) a lot of advertising dollars into their new Pepsi One. I don't know if the research was showing that "diet" is a dirty word, or what. Anyway, I don't begrudge them their reasons, mostly because I don't like the taste of Pepsi and it doesn't really affect me anyway.

Meanwhile, Coke introduced about eighteen thousand variations on Diet Coke, including Diet Vanilla Coke, Diet Cherry Coke, Diet Coke with Lemon, Diet Coke with Lime, and Diet Coke with Splenda instead of Nutrasweet. Initially, I thought the Splenda version was a vast improvement over regular Diet Coke, but I may post more on Splenda later.

Anyway, I'm really curious if then, on top of this, Coke saw the Pepsi One thing as an opportunity, because all of a sudden, there's Coca-Cola Zero. Which, if you're talking about calories, carbs or whatever, is clearly one less than Pepsi. Oops. Score one for Coke.

I switched, somewhat reluctantly, to Diet Coke about five or six years ago, during the stretch where I was actually successful in losing about twenty pounds. Since then, I've been in limbo, as I can't abide by the crappy taste of Diet, and I couldn't deal with the super sweetness of regular Coke. I was mostly resigned to RC and Diet Dr Pepper, which aren't terrible choices.

But this Coca-Cola Zero is actually really good. I'm not even saying "good for a cola drink." It actually tastes good in its own right. Very smooth for a soda.

It would be funny, I think, if Coke had prepared this whole slew of new products, then found themself with a winner because they had an opportunity to semantically beat the competition with the name of the thing.

If anyone finds some background on the strategy behind this, in the event that my speculation is completely and utterly wrong, please post it in the comments.