Coca-Cola’s new Coke and Diet Coke cans blur the lines between the brands

Earlier this week, I placed a to-go order at a restaurant. When I went to retrieve my drink from the restaurant’s beverage cooler, I looked for the cans of Coke, and couldn’t find them. I returned to the cashier and asked if they were out of Cokes, and she gave me an odd look, pointed at the cooler, and said “middle shelf.” When I looked again, I realized that the shelf of cans that I had mistaken for Diet Cokes were actually regular Cokes.

I started to think about how this could happen. Coca-Cola, as one of the most recognizable brands in the world, takes immense pride in the fact that their brands are recognizable at only a quick glimpse. That is, after all, the whole basis of the design of Diet Coke’s Spring 2011 cans (pictured to the far right above), that shows an ultra-cropped version of the Diet Coke logo; the idea being that the logo and colors are so unmistakeable that people can pick it out by seeing only small parts of it. I think the concept there is flawless, but when you think about the fact that they now share shelves with Coke’s new white can design (pictured second from the left above), it seems poorly thought out.

There’s a few reasons that I say this:

The color hierarchies are reversed

The color associated with Coke’s brand is Coke Red (which interestingly does not have a Pantone equivalent). The color associated with Diet Coke is silver. When you squint your eyes and look at the can designs above, the two that become most red-dominated are the the standard Coke can and, surprisingly, the new Diet Coke can. The two that appear to have the most silver are the two in the middle (the new Coke can and the old Diet Coke can).

In the new Coke can, the silver/white appears to be the dominant color, and the red takes a secondary role; this is the color hierarchy that most people associate with Diet Coke.

The two new can designs were introduced almost simultaneously

My point above regarding the color hierarchies doesn’t seem to give the consumer much credit. The average person purchasing a can of Coke can obviously very easily figure out that there is a new can design, and with very little thought or effort, can identify the product they were looking for. The problem is that both new can designs were introduced almost simultaneously, so any familiarity with either of the brands is lost. Singularly, I like each of the updated cans, and I think both are really beautiful designs, but the timing of the roll out seems way off.

The logos on both cans are now obscured

Where both logos before ran vertically, bottom to top, along the side of the can, both now run side to side. The logo on the new Diet Coke can, deliberately obscured by creative cropping of the logo, is now identifiable exclusively by design elements and colors, most of which it now shares with the Coke can. The old cans for both brands allowed for unobscured reading of the logo, but with the new orientation, there is no way it can be placed on a shelf that allows for unobscured reading. Particularly in the case of the new Coke can, this means it must now be recognized primarily by the can’s colors – colors that look more like the original Diet Coke can than a Coke can.

Update: I took a photo of the cans side by side on an actual store shelf to further illustrate my point. This shows just how much the new Coke cans look like Diet Coke cans.

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