One of the world’s most famous failures was “New Coke”. It is often trotted out as a reason people don’t like change: a colossal mistake in which the Coca-Cola Company dared to change their signature drink. As the story goes, the change was a failure and the world went back to normal.

Except that isn’t what happened.

The signature cola still changed its formula, because it was “reintroduced” with a different sweetener. It still changed its look (and continues to change its look). And perhaps most significantly, it changed its name!

In other words, Coca-Cola’s signature drink was changed drastically. But people were suddenly happy about it. Why?

Of course, it always comes down to marketing. The people were happy because the changes they thought they’d hate were slipped in under their nose and the other changes were ones that addressed their fears. Instead of “New Coke” they produced “Coca-Cola Classic”. It “felt” like it was old while obviously being new. The perfect vehicle for a new product.

This is why I despise its use as proof of people’s hatred of change when it clearly demonstrates the opposite. People love change. They rebel against things they don’t understand. And they reject ideas which they perceive to be an attack on their heritage.

So we trot out the New Coke Effect as a reason to do nothing. To refuse to improve our product or to even maintain our structures. We use it to avoid doing the hard things or making hard decisions. We use it as justification for behaving out of fear or anger. Feelings often only held by a vocal minority, regardless.

For us, The New Coke Effect is about remembering the wrong parts of our history, obsessing about marketing mistakes, and throwing our leaders under the bus. Our job is to reject that schema, because there was always going to be a new Coke whether or not they actually named it that. And in the end, after all the rage and new found love, we still got a new Coke.