They recognized that with the power of the consumer they can no longer control the brand. Each consumer is a brand that complements their personal brand with the drink they want at that moment. That drink will change next time as consumers always evolve. From the company that invented cola and kept its secret recipe for more than years this was not a simple act. It requires an honest recognition of the true power of consumers in a digitally empowered era. Covid only accelerated these trends. As people around the world saw their traditional authorities collapse due to lack of knowledge on how to handle the pandemic they realized that they are their own authorities.
If social media gave rise to large-scale personal branding the collapse of authorities during covid institutionalized it further into the mainstream. The recent cover of harvard business review magazine was dedicated to improving your personal brand further proof of the predominant mobile app designs service nature of the individual as a brand. We now face a world where every consumer is a brand and is fully empowered and empowered to do whatever they want. This structural change has meant that producers and creators take on a new role. They are no longer the destination but rather the set of tools.
Each consumer will use those tools as they see fit. In the case of coca-cola the consumer will switch from coca-cola zero to a new drink that may include fanta units of sprite cherry and the rest of dr. Pepper diet. A completely new drink that fits the current mood of that specific consumer. The next day the process will begin again using the toolkit to create a different drink to suit that specific mood and mindset. Although consumers might have done so in the past coca-cola had never been the facilitator of such experimentation and self-creation.