Whether it be the McDonald's iconic sauce on big Mac, KFC's unique spices mixture or
Coca-Cola's flagship sugar concentrate - the secret to the success of these products is
believed to lie in their formula of ingredients.
Because companies keep these formulas a guarded secret and no one from outside of the company
can get hold of these recipes, these products, and their tastes can simply not be replicated
by another brand, making them unique and thus, irreplaceable in the market.
In 2011, Cola-Cola surprised the world when they announced that they would share the confidential
formula of their world famous drink with the public during an NFL commercial, turned out
it was merely a marketing ploy where the company teased a "comical" formula for a fraction
of a second.
In 1977, the company even pulled out of India because they would have been legally required
to divulge their ingredient list to the government.
In another case, they managed to stall a divorce case when they suspected that some of the
coca-cola founder's handwritten notes were being shared as a part of a divorce settlement.
All of these incidents created the buzz in media which, in turn, worked as a free advertisement
for the coca-cola.
The company apparently believes that if you have got a secret of this much importance,
you got to protect it with best of your capabilities.
That's why the only printed copy of the full formula lies inside a secure vault on the
grounds of the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta.
Apart from that, only two employees are privy to the complete formula at any given time
and they are not permitted to travel together.
The identity of these two employees is itself a secret.
Alright.
Makes sense.
But the question that comes to mind is how does coca-cola manage to manufacture and sell
1.7 billion drinks in more than 200 countries around the globe every single day when the
ingredients to produce the product is known to only a handful of people?
If it really is the center of cola empire why hasn't any cola employee been successful
in leaking the formula yet, that too in a history of more than a century?
And why doesn't one just find out the components of the drink in a lab through scientific methods?
Quite contrary to these, in 2006, a former employee of coca-cola attempted to sell some
confidential documents that possibly included the secret formula and a vial of unreleased
drink to Pepsi for 1.5 Million dollars.
Instead of breaking a deal, Pepsi contacted FBI and helped the police in a plot to arrest
the man red-handed.
Pepsi could have used this opportunity to sell the taste of cola under their name and
become the sole player in the market.
They didn't do so because first, this would have been Illegal and second - it's not worth
the risk or effort.
The reality is that the Coca-Cola secret formula isn't really a "secret", so spending millions
of dollar to get this doesn't make sense.
The exact formula is known to many people around the world and any talented chemist
can recreate the formula to an extent that it's indistinguishable from the real one in
a blind taste at a much lower cost.
For decades, Coca-Cola has used this rumors about "secret" formula to enhance consumer
perception of Coca-Cola‘s specialness.
By insisting that the recipe is a trade secret coca-cola creates a mystique around the product
that helps promote a certain image in the minds of customers.
While what really "special" about coca-cola is its branding, the nostalgia behind its
history, and its chain of distribution - which can't be copied.
People may buy fake "Gucci" bags because the original ones may cost a liver and kidney
but why would anyone buy a slightly cheaper coca-cola drink from a nameless brand when
one can easily afford the real one?
Not many people would buy something that tastes like a coca-cola drink in a Pepsi bottle either.
Similarly, a newly founded "SideNote's BigMac" may have the same recipe as McDonald's but
this doesn't give you the happy clown guy and the billions of dollars of marketing power.
In fact, Coca-Cola's taste is so tightly tied to its name after years of marketing that
even the company itself can't easily change it.
In the 1980s, the company attempted to change the formula of the drink, a new better tasting
coke even passed a blind test against the old one but when it was brought to the market,
the company faced a massive backlash from the public.
People still preferred the old coke because of its familiar taste, the company gave in
to protests and returned to the old formula.