Taste Prototypes and Category Confusion: When Promising Everything Gives Us a Nothing Burger (or Soda)

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we follow the symbolic changes of soda, through its early days as a societal routine at the 1950s soda fountain to its more ambiguous current iterations as liquid sugar, nostalgia, and brand fairy tale, beginning in the 1980s and carrying into the present day.

We begin at the fountain, with chrome chairs, phosphate mixers, and the common syntax of refreshment.  We pivot to look into how soda lost the plot.  In the 1980s, overrun marketplaces brought in an era of gimmicks. Many examples of this can be covered. Dr. Hoffman highlights Life Savers soda, a "fruit" flavored drink that encouraged customers to drink candy and crested traditional category distinctions and imploded under its own enigmatic confusion.

 

To explain why items like this fail, we look to Gregory Murphy's notion of cognitive prototypes, which are frameworks that help us identify what fits.  When a drink does not fit into any established category, or when it's unclear for whether it's a soda, a snack, or a prank, the mind protests.  This resistance, a cognitive disfluency, contributes to the short shelf life of dessert-flavored drinks.

We next look at Coca-Cola's own efforts to manage this crossing, such as its widespread use of focus groups.  Using realistic reconstructions of Coca-Cola Life and Oreo Coke conversations, we explore ways the organization fit, sensory coherence, psychological response, and category expectations, in addition to taste.  These are more than simply beverage tests; they are sense-making rituals. 

 

 

This podcast episode makes limited use of copyrighted materials—such as archival audio, advertisements, or public statements—for purposes of commentary, critique, and scholarship. These uses fall under the doctrine of fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 107). All excerpts are employed selectively and transformatively to support critical analysis, educational inquiry, and public understanding. No commercial gain is derived from their inclusion.