In this April 23, 1985 file photo, Donald R. Keough, then Coca-Cola Co. President and Chief Operating Officer, toasts New Coke after a presentation at Lincoln Center in New York. Coca-Cola says Keough, who steered the company through the "cola wars" of the 1980s, died Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015 in Atlanta. He was 88.Marty Lederhandler/The Associated Press
Donald R. Keough, who as president of Coca-Cola Co. led the world's largest soft-drink maker during one of its most successful eras and one of its worst with the failed introduction of New Coke, has died. He was 88.
He died Tuesday at Emory Saint Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta, the company said. He had pneumonia.
As Coca-Cola's president from 1981 to 1993, Mr. Keough and then-CEO Roberto Goizueta, were credited with steering the business to a golden age of global growth. During that period, revenue rose to $14-billion from $5.9-billion and the average earnings gain was about 15-per-cent annually.
The executives also had setbacks, most notably reformulated Coke, which was their response to rival PepsiCo Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y.
In April, 1985, Mr. Goizueta announced that Atlanta-based Coca-Cola changed the formula of its flagship soda for the first time in its then 99-year-old history. He called New Coke "smoother, rounder, yet bolder" and "the boldest marketing move in the history of the consumer goods business."
Consumers didn't agree. They rejected the drink and flooded the company's headquarters with phone calls and letters demanding a return to old Coke.
"The Edsel of the 80s," said Roger Enrico, then-president of Pepsi-Cola USA, comparing New Coke with Ford Motor Co.'s famous design flop of the 1950s. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, seeing a misstep by a model of U.S. corporate strength, called New Coke "a sign of American capitalist decadence."
Less than three months later, Mr. Keough and Mr. Goizueta announced the company was pulling New Coke from store shelves and reintroducing the original formula, rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic. New Coke was renamed Coke II and relegated to the dustbin of corporate history.
"Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake," Mr. Keough said at the time, according to Mark Pendergrast's 1993 book, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola." "Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is, we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."