here is the second part:
Coca Cola quickly realized it had made a mistake. Coca Cola consumers drank coke for more than the taste, it was a matter of tradition, and they wanted their tradition back. New Coke was not going to be Coca Cola’s new hit product, in fact as stated by Haig, “As soon as the decision was announced, a large percentage of the US population immediately decided to boycott the new product”. This was not a business venture in which the positives outweighed the negatives. The only way Gizuetta and the rest of the Coca Cola Executives could try and fix this mess was to bring their original product back and actually listen to their customers. So, on July 10, 1985 Gizueta announced, “Today, we have two messages to deliver to the American consumer, first, to those of you who are drinking Coca-Cola with its great new taste, our thanks...But there is a second group of consumers to whom we want to speak to today and our message to this group is simple: We have heard you". Coca Cola listened to their customers and learned a lesson as Gizueta states, “It was then that we learned that if the shareholders think they own this company, they are kidding themselves. The reality is that the American consumer owns Coca-Cola”. Getting the original coca cola back was so important to Americans that as Pendergrast states, “So important was the development that ABC News's Peter Jennings interrupted regular programming to share it with viewers. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, David Pryor called it "a meaningful moment in U.S. history". It was clear that America was happy to have their traditional coke back, yet in the mean time Pepsi had been working hard to make it known that they were the winners of the coke wars. Coca Cola executives had given coke back to America, but would consumers go back to trusting Coca Cola when it appeared that Pepsi had the better drink?
Consumers were more than happy to rush back to Coca Cola. In fact sales were higher than ever as stated in the New York Times, “Six months after the rollout, Coke's sales had increased at more than twice the rate of Pepsi's”. Although it had appeared that Coca Cola was going to lose the Coke Wars for good, in the end they still wound up winners, as stated “Yes, it infuriated the public, cost a ton of money and lasted only 77 days before we reintroduced Coca-Cola Classic. Still, New Coke was a success because it revitalized the brand and reattached the public to Coke”. It was almost as if Coca Cola had planned the whole thing themselves. Customers were flattered that their voice had been heard and respected Coca Cola for bringing the original back. New Coke may not have had much success in the consumer world but it was very helpful to the overall life of Coca Cola as stated by Smith, “The Company had increased its volume of cola sales by twenty nine percent since the creation of the new coke”. Clearly Coca Cola was able to overcome what could have been a catastrophic blunder for the company.
Not many companies could come out of a crisis like the summer of 1985 as winners, yet Coca Cola does. What had started as a plan to get Coke out of a slump and had turned into a disaster still in the end accomplishes exactly what coke wanted.