What year did Coke come out with Diet Coke and how can I get a financial report on Coke from that year?
Got a bet with a friend that I think I’m gonna win. 
Thanks, CedricR.
DietCoke.com says it was introduced in 1982.
It was introduced in limited markets in July of 1982. It probably didn’t hit full market for a month or two. So, if your bet involves anthing to do with the share of the market or sales, I’d probably try to get a 1983 report.
So’s we can perhaps help more, what was the bet?
We know that Coke spent full 50% of their worldwide revenues on the Diet Coke promotion. My friend says it was the sum of 20 million. That seems a lot for even world wide advertising but a pretty low sum for a corporation as large as Coke. I’m betting that the amount spent was larger than 20 million.
And, NO, that much money spent on advertising doesn’t make that stuff taste any better. I call it Diet Choke. YUCK!
CedricR.
Their diet drink before 82 was Tab. They kept making Tab even after Diet Coke came out although the sales are way below Diet Coke.
All I can find are numbers for one quarter of 1983. But they show that in that one quarter, Coca Cola had worldwide revenues of $1.8 billion.
If you simply quadruple that to reflect a full year, that would work out to $7.2 billion, which means that Coke would have spent $3.6 billion on the launch of Diet Coke, if you and your friend are right.
So I’m doubrful that your 50% figure is correct to start with. It may be that Coke spent 50% of its U.S. marketing budget to launch Diet Coke (remember, it wasn’t launched internationally until 1983, and then only in selected markets). That amount might be more or less $20 million.
But no way in hell would a company like Coca Cola spend $3.6 billion to launch anything.
All I remember is Telly Savalas saying, “Just for the taste of it”. :rolleyes:
After all the responses here, I did some checking… and it seems more likely that our 50% figure must be domestic revenues instead of world wide profits but I can’t get anything definite.
That does make more sense when you figure that the “release” of the product was staggered out over time.
That would make it harder to determine what they actually did spend. For sure though, it’s a hell of a lot more money than any of us will ever see.
Then he probably lied about a lot of other things too! :D:D:D:D:D
Lots of stars in this (purported) first Diet Coke commercial…couldn’t have been cheap! No surprise to me they had to hire expert actors to pretend to like Diet Coke though. 