Painting a New Profit Picture

Who was Roberto Goizueta? He was Chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co. and he disturbed the present like no one before him at Coca-Cola when the company made a marketing blunder for the ages. On April 19, 1985, New Coke was introduced. There was no backup plan – production of the original formulation completely ended that day.

New Coke’s debut was so disastrous that rival Pepsi gave its employees the next day off to celebrate.

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Goizueta soon accepted the inevitable — New Coke was a failure. But while that door close, he led Coca-Cola on a quest to find new doors to open. The original formula was reintroduced as Coke Classic, and within a year, Coca-Cola had not only reclaimed market share, it gained market share. What followed were spinoffs of Coke Classic – Diet Coke, Cherry Coke and Coke Zero.

The point to you as a cotton grower? Sometimes things that didn’t work yesterday, can, and do, today. Often we see off-the-wall thinking as whimsical. “Sounds okay, but not worth trying.” Often we see out-of-the-box thinking as creative. “Hey, good idea. I’ll give it a shot.” But there’s a very thin line between the two. And just as often, it’s only a matter of timing.

December Cotton Grower is traditionally a theme issue, and this year’s is “Painting a New Profit Picture.”

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What we hope you’ll find on the following pages reinforces what you know, and encourages you to look a little deeper into things you doubt. You may find a combination that not only allows you to survive, but flourish, over the next 10 years. Think both off the wall and out of the box.

So with brushes in hand and a canvas on an easel, disturb the present.

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