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Soft Drink Makers Try Health Pitch to Spur Sales
By ANDREW MARTIN

朱祐廷報告

Healthy soda?

That may strike some as an oxymoron. But for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, it's a marketing opportunity.
In coming months, both companies will introduce new carbonated drinks that are fortified with vitamins and minerals: Diet Coke Plus and Tava, which is PepsiCo's new offering.

They will be promoted as 「sparkling beverages.」 The companies are not calling them soft drinks because people are turning away from traditional soda, which has been hurt in part by publicity about its link to obesity.

While the soda business remains a $68 billion industry in United States, consumers are increasingly reaching for bottled water, sparking juices and green tea drinks. In 2005, the amount of soda sold in America dropped for the first time in recent history. Even the diet soda business has slowed.

Coca-Cola's chief executive, E. Neville Isdell, clearly frustrated that his industry has been singled out in the obesity debate, insisted at a recent conference that his diet products should be included in the health and wellness category because, with few or no calories they are a logical answer to expanding waistlines.

「Diet and light brands are actually health and wellness brands,」 Mr. Isdell said. He asserted that Diet Cake Plus was a way to broaden the category to attract new consumers.

Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a food and beverage consulting firm, said it was 「a joke」 to market artificially sweetened soft drinks as 「the antithesis of healthy,」 he said.

These consumers 「comment on putting something synthetic and not natural into their bodies when they consume diet colas,」 Mr. Pirko said. 「And in the midst of a health and welfare boom, that ain't good.」

The idea of healthy soda is not entirely new. In 2004, Cadbury Schweppes unveiled 7Up Plus brand by labeling it 「100 percent natural.」 But the company changed the label to 「100 percent natural flavor」 after complaints from a nutrition group that a product containing high-fructose corn syrup should not be considered natural, and 7Up Plus has floundered.

Besides the vitamin-fortified diet sodas, PepsiCo is introducing Diet PepsiMax, with increased caffeine and ginseng, and Coca-Cola has started a new marketing campaign for Coke Zero, emphasizing how close it tastes to Coke Classic.

In discussing the sluggishness in diet soda sales, Dawn Hudson, president and chief executive of Pepsi-Cola North America, noted that over the last decade, consumers grew tired of drinking nothing but colas like Coke and Pepsi and sought other beverages. But recently, she said, noncola diet drinks like Diet Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist Free have done well.

Tava, the new drink, will contain vitamins B3, B6 and E, and chromium.

Atie Bayne, senior vice president for Coca-Cola Brands at Coca-Cola North America, also predicted that new products and clever marketing would reinvigorate diet sales.

「In today's world, it's not about what we choose to sell, but what consumers want,」 Ms. Bayne said. Diet Cake Plus – which will contain niacin, vitamins B6 and B12, magnesium and zinc- 「is right for a certain group of consumers,」 she said.