‘Refreshing’ Change Planned For ‘Up Thing’ 7-Up Fold Will Rework Product For Launch Next Year

Coming up for the “up thing” will be a new taste.

A reformulated 7-Up will be launched next year, Dr Pepper/Seven Up Inc. told bottlers last week at a convention in San Antonio.

The new version will be a “better blend of lemon and lime flavors,” according to Todd Stitzer, president and chief executive of the company, which is owned by Britain’s Cadbury/Schweppes PLC.

Stitzer said the sweetness levels of the new 7-Up remain unchanged.

“Our aim was not to mimic Sprite, and we did not, as anyone will know after making their own comparison,” Stitzer said.

But he said consumers rated the taste of new 7-Up “comparably with Sprite” in taste tests in which consumers weren’t told which brand they were sampling.

Seven-Up, which once marketed its product as “the uncola” and more recently as “an up thing” will get a new advertising campaign called “refreshing moments” to go along with the new version of soft drink. Two of the ads are slated for November, while three will follow at the beginning of 1998. New packaging graphics will feature a lemon and a lime, as well as a 20-ounce proprietary bottle.

The changes to 7-Up have been propelled by the soft drink’s difficulty in the beverage battle for “throat space.”

In the 1940s, 7-Up was the third best-selling soft drink in the world. By last year, 7-Up had dropped to the eighth best selling soft drink with about 2.4 percent of the market, according to the trade newsletter Beverage Digest. Sprite was fourth at 5.8 percent.

Because of 7-Up’s market decline, there is probably less risk in reformulating the drink, said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest.

“This is a classic case of without risk there is no reward. They need to do something to jump start this brand, give it a shot in the arm,” he said.

Still, reformulating soft drinks can be risky. Coca-Cola altered its recipe for Coke in 1985 and quickly had to bring back the old flavor under the name Coca-Coca Classic.

Marc Cohen, an analyst who covers Coca-Cola for Goldman Sachs, said he’s taking a wait-and-see attitude about 7-Up’s reformulation because the soft drink maker failed to get consumer reaction in a test market.

“That’s exactly what Coca-Cola did. They did consumer taste testing and made decisions based on that, but they never went into the marketplace to see consumer reaction,” said Cohen.

Sicher said he thinks the reformulation will work, even without testing consumers.

“Coca-cola is a virtual icon of American culture, 7-Up is not. So there is less of a chance for an emotional reaction to changing the flavor of 7-Up. Having said that, is there some risk of unhappy consumers? There is some risk, but they have what they believe is a strategy to minimize it,” he said.

That strategy is to market the soft drink as an enhanced 7-Up, rather than a new version. The bottle does not carry the word “new” anywhere on it.

Seven-Up has successfully changed its drinks’ taste in the past. In 1990, the company relaunched its Diet 7-Up and Cherry 7-Up brands. Diet 7-Up was reformulated with a slightly sweeter taste and Cherry 7-Up received an extra splash of cherry taste.