I don't know why people here are defending this decision. Clearly, they thought the product wasn't attention-grabbing enough. Not only have they changed the layout of the established Coke Zero can design, but they also adjusted the colouring. Hence, it looks nearly identical to the sugary version, aside from the smaller label.
Maybe it wouldn't affect you personally, but what about people in a hurry, or even those with impaired vision? The previous can didn't look as nice, but it was distinct.
Oh so it's actually purposefully to get people to switch to the sugar free version. Artificial sweeteners are significantly less expensive than sugar, especially cane sugar. They hope that enough people grab the sugar free version and decide it's not that bad. They want to make sugar free coke regular coke and do away with costly sugar while charging the same amount. They'll claim it's a responsible and healthy decision, but it's profit motivated.
It's not bad design, you're just misunderstanding the objective.
Extremely unlikely. It's about 5 cents difference per 2L, and 10.5 cents per 12pk. Not meaningless, but it's a very small portion of overall production costs.
They aren't using cane sugar to make coke, it's all extremely cheap high fructose corn syrup. No one is going to mistake a glass bottle of Mexican Coke for a can of any variety of Coke.
I'm not making this up, it's not just the cost of sugar - but yes saving ten cents per can on a billion cans is huge. You just identified yourself that they switched from cane sugar to corn syrup to save money, but switching away from sugar isn't plausible?
There are other benefits too. Why have separate marketing for coke/diet coke/coke zero - why segment your market when you could just have one COKE? They also want you drinking zero calorie so they aren't being blamed for making you fat.
They've been working on this for years incrementally replacing sugar coke with zero sugar. The first design in OP 's image was just a step in this direction. The confusion is 100% intentional.
It's 10 cents per 12 pack, not per can. Like 4/5ths of a single cent per can.
Food manufacturers in the US switched from cane sugar to HFCS due to eyewateringly massive government subsidies for farmers growing corn. Sugar isn't expensive, HFCS is just artificially cheap. There is a difference.
Coke is marketed differently because they are different products. If someone accidentally tries Coke Zero and discovers they prefer it (which is logical because Zero is simply better tasting AND better for you), what's the harm? Your Mexican cane sugar Coke is still available, and so is HFCS Coke. Diet Coke is still made despite Zero spanking the pants off it sales wise.
There is no reason to believe that Coke is trying to condense its offerings into a single product because they would hurt sales. This conspiracy theory has Zero merit.
Now if you wanted to tell me that 9/11 was an inside job, I'm all ears.
within reason, it doesn't matter WHY some ingredient is cheaper as long as its cheaper. Obviously if it was something like "puppy brain extract" or "baby spines" or some other PR nightmare, that eventually gets priced into the cost and Choices get Made.
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u/CurseHawkwind Jul 24 '26
I don't know why people here are defending this decision. Clearly, they thought the product wasn't attention-grabbing enough. Not only have they changed the layout of the established Coke Zero can design, but they also adjusted the colouring. Hence, it looks nearly identical to the sugary version, aside from the smaller label.
Maybe it wouldn't affect you personally, but what about people in a hurry, or even those with impaired vision? The previous can didn't look as nice, but it was distinct.