Suuuurrrge!!

This may be the age of the Internet, but there are still many books to be read. One that I’ve been into of late is Citizen Marketers – When People are the Message by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. I highly recommend it.

Arriving at chapter five of this fine effort, I was amazed to find the story of something out of my own murky past. It’s described very accurately in the book as “an alien-green, highly-caffeinated soda called Surge…MIA since 2002.”

The story unfolds that a gentleman by the name of Eric Karakovack from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, whom the book describes as a “genial, outgoing, and sincere” web developer is a passionate fan of Surge. He teamed up with another Surge fan by the name of Avery Lund and together they launched SaveSurge.org. The site features “500 pages of Surge testimonials, photographs of Surge marketing paraphernalia, and recipes for Surge Jell-O and Surge Cookies.”

And get this: “Twelve-packs of the soda four years past their expiration date have sold for $152 on eBay.”

Back in 1996, I was a creative director at Leo Burnett. At Leo, everyone worked together as a cohesive team. Not. No, what really happened was that creative groups basically mauled, kicked and outworked each other trying to win assignments. To win meant glory, money, promotions. To lose meant going to work at J. Walter Thompson.

Our group won a few and lost a few. But one of our victories was an assignment from Coca-Cola for the introduction of Surge. Developed to drive a wedge into the very successful Pepsi brand of Mountain Dew, Surge was indeed an “alien-green, highly-caffeinated” liquid.

The creative team of Phil Gayter and Joe Gallo authored, and with producer Stuart Kramer, filmed a series of spots for the brand. They were a bit ahead of their time, featuring groups of urban guys who set up over-the-top competitions to get their hands on the brand.

How did the spots do? This from Citizen Marketers: “For a while, Surge did OK as a product: 69 million cases sold in its first year. A respectable number for a niche soda. Two years later, Surge lost its marketing fizz. Sales dropped 25 percent, to 51.8 million cases. A year after that, Surge sales didn’t, and they slid another 48 percent. Bottlers across the country reevaluated their investment in the brand. The publisher of Beverage Digest suspected that the demise was caused by marketing inattention, saying Coke did not dedicate enough resources for it to escape the formidable shadow of Mountain Dew, which is made by Coke’s archenemy, PepsiCo. Like a rolling blackout, Surge disappeared from store shelves. By February 2002, most bottlers had stopped producing it.”

Now there is not only SaveSurge.com, but also a SaveSurge Hall of Fame and “Save Surge-The Movie,” 28 minutes worth of soda hunting. There is also a new test market brand from Coca-Cola called Vault, which the Surgers seem to like a lot. This in turn has caused Mr. Karkovack to build and launch VaultKicks.org. So it looks like Fort Dew will again be under surge, er, siege.

You might want to check out SaveSurge.org and VaultKicks.org. Obviously these are great examples of “citizen marketers” who are leading companies like Coca-Cola into the brave new world of economic democracy.

As for my part, I’m glad to have played a small role in the whole thing. You see, when I was presented with the idea from Gayter and Gallo, I fortunately did a very smart thing.

I didn’t kill it.