COCA-COLA FAILS TO REACH FRUITOPIA AT THE OASIS

(Article from Brand Strategy, Centaur Communications Ltd.)

Launched in May 1995 and pulled in December 1996, such was the short life of still, fruit drink Fruitopia on the shores of Blighty. When the Coca-Cola-owned Minute Maid drink was introduced it only had two real competitors: the UK's Oasis and Quaker-owned Snapple from the US. This was a brand new market so why was Fruitopia so short-lived?

In true Coca-Cola style, Fruitopia was launched with a bang compared to Cadbury Schweppes' relatively mild approach to marketing its Oasis brand. In the UK alone, Fruitopia spent GBP 3.2m on advertising, which should have sealed its dominance from the start.

Coca-Cola made all the right noises when it came to Fruitopia's marketing launch. It put together a touchy feely ad campaign, featuring such phrases as "The apples don't fight the pineapples in fruit integration. People could learn a lot from fruit", echoing Snapple's hippy-chic heritage. It enlisted the services of the least corporate American celebrity it could find - in this instance, Kate Bush. Strangely, her voice in the UK was replaced by Cocteau Twins' front woman, Liz Fraser.

But that was as good as it got for Fruitopia. While Snapple wasn't making it big in the UK, underdog Oasis got the jump on Coca-Cola for a change, and ran away with 70% of the still, fruit drink market. Lifeline, a London-based drug charity, condemned Coca-Cola's pricey ad campaign for encouraging drug use with the line 'get out of your head'.

Richard Corbett, soft drinks specialist at drinks research house, Canadean explains why he thinks Fruitopia was so short lived in the UK: "Oasis, Snapple and Fruitopia were premium products in glass bottles. At the time the thinking was that the market for such premium products was not large enough to sustain all three brands. This would account for Coca-Cola's decision to refocus on its established brands where the marketing spend yielded a better response."

This tallies with Coca-Cola's reasoning. The Coca-Cola external affairs manager, Ian Muir, at the time said: "It was doing well but we feel there is much more growth potential in our main core brands." A spokeswoman added in The Grocer that: "The scale of opportunity was small compared to the investment required."