🥤 Coca-Cola’s Marketing Chief Predicted Their Worst Idea Would Be a Billion-Dollar Hit...

In the early 90s, someone at Coca-Cola HQ pitched one of the strangest (and honestly darkest) ideas in marketing history: “What if we launched a soda that admits it’s not even that good?”

The concept was bizarre but kind of brilliant…in theory.

They were chasing Gen X, who (at the time) were proudly anti-capitalist and violently allergic to polish. This was the MTV generation. Too cool for sincerity. Raised on Nirvana’s “Whatever, Nevermind” culture.

Basically the human embodiment of an eye-roll emoji before emojis even existed. (Forever my favorite generation. 😅)

So Coke bottled that vibe, slapped a name on it, and called it OK Soda.

And they designed it to be…well, just as thrilling as the name promised. Grayscale cans covered in doodles of cartoon characters who looked perpetually bored. Or sad. Or maybe indifferent? (Hard to tell. Their whole expression screamed: “Whatever, I don’t know…who cares?”)

The ads doubled down on the self-deprecation. Taglines like “Don’t expect too much.” It was marketing as parody. A brand that winked, shrugged, and basically dared you to drink it anyway.

Honestly, it was kind of like the perfect anti-brand for Gen X. And for a hot second, people did buy into it.

This is the type of social listening and emotion-to-market matching that could have worked and made Coke millions…had it not been for psychology. 🤣

Except Coke forgot the golden rule of marketing:

👉 Just because you can market an emotion…
👉 Doesn’t mean you should.

Why OK Soda Failed: The Psychology Breakdown

Today I want to break down this iconic story because every single misstep Coke made is still the same mistake I see brands make today. Let’s start with the basics:

1. Please, for the love of marketing…don’t sell taste with irony.

Imagine spending millions of dollars on billboards that basically scream: “Our product is mid.” That was OK Soda. The tagline: “It’s just OK.” literally told people all they needed to know about this soda in a split second.

I think Coke was trying to activate some sort of Prediction Violation: i.e.: the discrepancy between an expectation and reality, often triggering a surprise signal that leads to learning, adaptation, and changes in behavior.

They wanted people to see their ads and think: “No way this could be that bad…right?”

Unfortunately for Coke, they must have forgot that your brain is wired to believe the first piece of information it comes across, no matter now odd it is. If you tell me the soda is mediocre, my brain will literally taste it as mediocre. (Expectation anchoring is a cruel beast.)

It’s the same reason blind taste tests trick people into thinking cheap wine is bad wine if you tell them it’s cheap…even when it’s literally the same bottle.

So yeah. Coke kneecapped their own product before it even hit shelves.

2. Confusion will kill a product faster than any Meta spend issue could.

The packaging on this thing looked like an indie art magazine: lots of cryptic slogans, collage-style graphics, chain letters from your weird pen pal in Oregon…the works.

Was it quirky? Absolutely.
Was it clear? Not even a little.

Here’s the rule for all you creative marketers out there who might be thinking about going after “odd” as your USP: the easier something is to process, the more we like it (Processing Fluency). The harder it is, the more we distrust it.

Liquid Death nailed this delicate balance decades later when they ran their iconic “Murder your thirst” campaign. Skull can. Funny name. Boom. You get it in one glance.

OK Soda felt like you had to do homework before you could even buy it. And nobody wants homework in the soda aisle…

3. Rebellion without a resolution is just a tantrum.

Now, I will give Coke some credit here. They did try to tap into something called “reactance” (the human instinct to rebel against authority) which is exactly what made Liquid Death a $1.4 billion dollar brand decades later. It’s a great idea in theory.

But rebellion by itself doesn’t sell anything but crankiness (which, I hear…you can solve with a Snickers bar 😅) If you really want people to act on what they feel…you have to give people a way to resolve their inner angst.

• Nike rebels against self-doubt by selling their iconic “Just Do It” mentality.

• Apple rebels against conformity by selling their iconic “Think Different” slogan.

OK Soda really just rebelled against…soda.

When you bought it, you weren’t joining a movement of any sort. You were just confused in a grocery store.

4. No tribe = no traction

If you look closely you can tell: every successful soda in the 90s came with a built-in tribe:

• Mountain Dew = sports extremists.

• Sprite = hip-hop culture.

• Pepsi = pop music + youth rebellion.

Most of these brands understood that you have to get injected into the culture to build LTV. The problem with OK soda was nobody wanted to claim it. 😬

Ok soda couldn’t run commercials with cool kids skateboarding or celebrities repping it because their core message was “we stand with nobody”. This signaled to consumers: “no one drinks this.”

You see the problem here??

Every brand has to stand for something, and every brand should find a tribe of people who agree with them…or die in the process.

If your brand doesn’t help me say something about me, I’m not wasting fridge space on it.

5. The Negative Halo Effect

Finally, we can’t talk about what happened with OK Soda without bringing up branding.

In a general sense, branding usually makes products taste better. (That’s the halo effect: for the brain, anything you experience that’s nice gets attributed to the things around it.) Sleek ads, a beautiful design, and celebrity endorsements literally change how we experience flavor.🤯

(I love the brain, it’s so weird!!)

But OK Soda ran with a negative halo effect as their core position in the market. They branded it with advertising that was melancholy and mediocre, and surprise! People thought it tasted…mediocre.

Negative halo = negative experience.

How NOT To Do This To Your Brand

Here’s the part to pay attention to, because it’s easy to read this story and laugh at Coke like, “Wow, who thought that was a good idea?” 🤪

But here’s the problem: modern brands fall into the same trap all the time.

They mirror the mood of their customer without offering a way out.

They get so clever with aspiration or relatability, they forget to sell realism.

They confuse “standing out” with “be more contrarian.”

And they forget that if your brand doesn’t give me a tribe to belong to, it won’t belong anywhere in my head (or my heart, which is where you want to be as a brand these days.)

That’s the OK Soda trap in a nutshell: Coke wasn’t wrong about Gen X cynicism. They just mistook it for the destination instead of the starting point.

And when you build your brand on the wrong emotion, the whole house collapses.

Inside Tether Lab on Skool, we break stories like this apart and show you how to apply the psychology the right way:

• Spotting the difference between what people feel and what they’ll actually buy into.

• Turning emotions into magnets, not mirrors.

• Building campaigns that don’t just capture attention—they move people toward action.

It’s not about avoiding mistakes for the sake of it. It’s about seeing how quickly even the biggest brands can get it wrong…so you don’t repeat history with your own.

👉 Join us inside Tether Lab and learn how to decode the emotions that actually scale.

Because your brand deserves more than “just OK.”

Until next week,

🦕 Sarah

🚨 Dex’s Trend Alert: 10,000% Spike…The Morning Routine Industrial Complex Is Back.

This week’s breakout isn’t skincare or supplements—it’s searches. “Positive morning routines” spiked ↑ 10,000% month-over-month and year-over-year.

Apparently, nothing says late September like panic-Googling “how to fix my mornings” before Q4 chaos hits.

📈 The Signal:
This isn’t just productivity hacking. It’s a seasonal reset ritual.

→ New school year, new fiscal quarter, new “I’m gonna get my life together.”
→ Google spikes show it’s less about what to do (the habits) and more about how to feel (positive).
→ Morning routines = emotional scaffolding for shaky identities.

🧠 The Diagnosis:
This is mood engineering, not time management.

Morning routines aren’t about squeezing in lemon water before Slack pings. They’re about:

• Identity rehearsal → “If I meditate, journal, and green-juice by 8 a.m., maybe I’m the kind of person who has it together.”

• Psychological insurance → Starting with a win before the world takes a swing.

• Control theater → In an economy that feels unstable, “at least I own my mornings.”

And notice the keyword: positive. Not “effective,” not “optimized.” Consumers want vibes, not metrics.

📌 How to capitalize (without giving ‘LinkedIn Hustle Bro’ energy):

🛍️ For DTC Brands
Package products as morning identity anchors.
→ “Start your day with clarity” (supplement).
→ “The first sip of confidence” (beverage).
→ “The outfit that feels like momentum” (apparel).

🎥 For Creators & Media Buyers
Sell vibes, not checklists.
→ TikTok POV: “Things in my positive morning routine that aren’t negotiable.”
→ UGC ads framed as cozy cinematic rituals, not sterile step-by-steps.

🧠 For Strategists
Morning is the highest-leverage slot in identity marketing.
It’s the one window where consumers aren’t reacting—they’re deciding who they want to be.
If your brand can attach to that decision, you stick all day.

💡 Pro Move:
Build a “Positive Morning Routine Quiz” funnel. Map answers (Calm Seeker, Momentum Chaser, Aesthetic Optimizer) to bundles. Sell the emotional outcome of mornings, not the routine itself.

Until next time—
Stay curious and remember:
If they’re Googling “positive morning routines”…
They’re not looking for habits. They’re looking for a better version of themselves to wake up to.

🦖 Dex