August 7th, 2006 / by Kevin
BusinessWeek on Mary Minnick
Excellent article in BusinessWeek on Mary Minnick, head of marketing, strategy and innovation at Coca-Cola. It sounds like she hates the Black-Vanilla-Whatever brand extensions as much as I do, and wants to create the kind of new products consumers haven’t even realized were missing from their lives. So she’s basically my most favorite person, ever. [More commentary at BevBlog, although I found this article on my own.]
8 Comments
August 8th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Oh yeah, just what the world needs, health and beauty products from a vendor of sugar water. I can see it now…
Our Classic Coke facials are deeply relaxing and a wonderful treatment by themselves or in combination with a massage and a Pibb Xtra bath. Our one-hour Sprite facial includes a Five Alive herbal steam, Fresca clay scrub, Full Throttle clay mask, Minute Maid Orange Juice & cream mask, and a face, hand and foot massage.
Yeah, this woman is a genius. I can’t wait until they come out with my most wanted product, carbonated nail polish!
August 8th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I like when Tim tries to describe something as terrible but it turns out sounding amazingly sweet. Sign me up for a Dr Pepper colon cleansing, stat.
Also: I’d like to declare a moratorium on the smug use of “sugar water” to describe Coke and its brethren — it’s played out, people! It’s now in the same category as “idiot box.” And I mean you wish there was actual sugar or actual water in these drinks. If someone came out with real-life sugar water in a bottle, it would be hailed as an all-natural alterna-bev for discerning eco-warriors.
All that being said, I’m not drinking this Minnick Kool-Aid. She sounds like all sass no sassafras. I don’t know what that means but she was behind Nordic Mist and Fruitopia. And she said: “We need to refine the Fanta vision.” I don’t need no tough-talking executive w/moxie. I need a deranged visionary who lives in a cave and comes up with something like Crawfish Coke that has everyone rethinking their whole freaking weltanschauung.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Josh, I love you like my own flesh and blood but I did NOT just read you dissing Fruitopia. I will get all Olivier-in-The Jazz Singer if you did in fact commit such an act.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Also: lady, it’s a fucking beverage. Take your resentment and your stunted creativity into a field where you will truly find the artistic genius you so desperately crave, i.e. blogging.
August 9th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Fruitopia was probably the worst product ever, in the history of all thirst, but it sounds like it wasn’t this lady’s fault.
August 9th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Let me just go right ahead and list a few Fruitopia flavors: Strawberry Passion Awareness, Tangerine Wavelength, Fruit Integration, Lemonade Love & Hope, Raspberry Psychic Lemonade. The primary ingredients were Burning Man Residue and Spin Doctors Awfulness.
August 10th, 2006 at 10:45 am
This is quickly becoming a post about Josh not being able to get in touch with his feelings, but you have to look at those names in context. This was the era of HORDE and Lilith Fair. Fruitopia was just a zeitgeist remora on the neo-hippie movement turtle, shark or manta ray.
August 10th, 2006 at 11:17 am
…..I liked one of their flavors.
THERE. I SAID IT.