Coca Cola ditches Coke Zero … “Museum of Failure” celebrates companies’ biggest stuff-ups … NSW looks at taxi fare deregulation

By Dominic Powell and Emma Koehn.

Coca-Cola Australia will ditch its Coke Zero label in favour of a more explicitly branded “Coca-Cola No Sugar”, as the soft drink giant looks to make its sugar-free options clearer to consumers.

Fairfax reports the company will launch its new No Sugar Coke next week after the company found just one in two consumers knew the Coke Zero brand was sugar-free. Coke Zero was launched in 2006 as an offering to appear to male consumers, complementary to the company’s longstanding Diet Coke range. The company will retire the brand Coke Zero brand after launching Coca-Cola No Sugar.

Australia is reportedly one of the first countries chosen for the No Sugar trial, with the president of Coca-Cola in Australia Roberto Mercade telling Fairfax the drink will be marketed at the “core target” group of 18 to 49-year-olds.

Swedish museum celebrates companies’ biggest product failures

A museum in the Swedish town of Helsingborg has a taken a unique look at all the weird and wacky rejected products that never took off, calling itself the “Museum of Failure”.

The museum includes such gems as Heinz’ green tomato sauce, Pepsi’s clear ‘crystal’ soft drink, and even the much ridiculed two-wheeled Segway, reports AAP. The museum’s creator Samuel West told AAP he wanted to provide a place where people could learn from the failures that came out of company’s “innovation projects”.

“We know that 80 to 90 percent of innovation projects, they fail and you never read about them, you don’t see them, people don’t talk about them,” West said.

“And if there’s anything we can do from these failures, is learn from them.”

Newer “innovations” such as Google’s Glass headpiece also feature, along with stranger products, like a Harley Davidson men’s perfume from the 1990s.

NSW moves towards taxi fare deregulation

Big changes are on the horizon in the NSW taxi industry with the state moving towards a fare deregulation framework that would allow taxis to turn off their meters.

The Australian reports the state is currently ironing out the plans, which would remove fixed rates for taxi services and allow the sector to better compete with Uber drivers by letting customers search for the lowest available fare through phone and mobile booking options.

“If [a taxi] is booked through an app or on the phone, or any other way that it might be booked, it would be a negotiated fare,” the state’s Point to Point commissioner Barbara Wise told The Australian.

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