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Perhaps not, but Coke carefully thought out the reasoning behind the post- industrial-looking can. "We're trying to capture the irony they live with," Lanahan says."What we're trying to show with those symbols is someone who is just being, and just being OK." In an effort to broaden the product's appeal to nonwhite teens, another can shows no face at all, while a third depicts a primitively drawn red face without distinctive ethnic features.
With so much thought given to OK's slogans and packaging, what about the reddish-brown beverage itself? Coke says the flavor evolved from the fact that teens consume a variety of drinks that range from colas to lemon-lime. The company therefore concocted a new soda that would blend all these tastes into a single drink. And as with virtually everything else connected to the project, Coke arrived at the final flavor through extensive tests. (The company went so far as to list a soft-drink ingredient called ester gum as glycerol ester of wood rosin on the label, a more outdoorsy sound.)
Ultimately, teen reaction to this blend is what will make or break the product once Coke rolls it out across the U.S. this summer and takes it abroad toward the end of the year. So far, and perhaps in keeping with the generation's entrenched skepticism, two groups of Minnesota teenagers who participated in a Minneapolis focus group last Thursday showed little enthusiasm for the product at first taste. Both groups loved the 800 number and repeatedly called it from the observation room. The first group of 15-to- 17-year-olds eventually warmed up to OK. The group of 18-to-20-year-olds never warmed up at all. Given such initial coolness, Coke will have to hope that if teenagers swallow its cunning sales pitch, they will come around to guzzling the drink.