As we shared at the end of 2022, we’ve all spent a LOT of time trying to grab the attention of Coca-Cola Corporate in the past two years. And while it’s still very important that consumers continue to talk to them about TaB, (call and e-mail them as often as you can), the SaveTaBSoda Committee is going to be placing a renewed focus on contacting the Coca-Cola Bottlers.
The bottlers are not staffed to take all of the collective TaB community’s calls–so instead, our tactic will be to have the Committee itself contact them directly on behalf of all of you.
Why Contact Bottlers?
They have influence in the Coca-Cola System–if they want to produce a product, they may be able to convince corporate to reverse their decision.
They are closer to the consumer–and can potentially see the market demand for TaB that corporate may not be aware of.
They are independent businesses, and we believe we can appeal to them if we focus on how producing TaB will benefit their bottom line ($).
We’ll Contact the Bottlers–You Focus on Corporate
YOU keep contacting corporate (800.GET.COKE) and WE will focus on the bottlers — that’s TaB Teamwork!
A Request
For us to effectively convince the bottlers of the fan demand for TaB, we are going to need some information from you to pass along.
Things like: how much you miss TaB, how much you’d purchase if it came back, what you’d be willing to pay for it, and other related items. We’ll be capturing these details from you in a series of surveys we’ll be sharing in the coming weeks.
Here’s the link to our first survey. Please take a minute to fill it out.
It’s been a busy year for those of us in the TaB drinking community. At this point, most of us are completely without TaB (and have been for quite a while), with a select few who are watching their remaining stockpiles dwindle. And yet we carry on, working hard to get our beverage back.
As we look forward to 2023, the year TaB would have turned 60, we have many more activities and events planned to keep the attention on TaB. But before we get into that, we thought it would be best to share a recap of what we’ve all been up to this past year.
January
The year started off with a bang when CNN picked up a story on our efforts. A few high profile individuals tweeted the story, which got us a lot of attention. Then we had a media frenzy that carried forward into February.
Many articles/interviews were created about our cause:
Valentines for TaB. During the week of 2/7-2/14 we all made phone calls and sent e-mails to Coca-Cola Corporate asking for TaB to be brought back. A Valentine’s message doubled as a way to let them know we’re all still here. And we still want TaB.
March
We did a March Madness themed event. We asked TaB drinkers to 1) Contact Coca-Cola Corporate, 2) Contact Major Retailers (like WalMart/Amazon), and 3) flood Social Media with TaB. Responding to Coca-Cola Tweets and posts wherever we see something Coke-related–we add a post about TaB.
April
We focused our efforts on major retailers. We contacted corporate for the following stores, looking for a partner to reach out to Coca-Cola on our behalf:
Albertson’s
Amazon
Costco
Hy-Vee
Publix
Wal-Mart
The major retailers we have been in touch with.
May
We built an online photo archive of TaB drinkers. We’ve used the photos from this photo gallery in many of our communications to Coca-Cola and the bottlers. We’ll likely do another round of collecting photos in 2023. Thank you for sharing your photos.
June/July
THIS WAS OUR BIG EVENT! We launched our Billboards in Atlanta! They were live for a full month, and during this time, we issued press releases and met with journalists to discuss why TaB is so important that we bought billboards near Coca-Cola headquarters with our message on it.
Articles continue to be written about our efforts:
We shared a little about the “behind-the-scenes” of the Committee. While there are many public projects going on, there are also things we’ve been working on that don’t require so much marketing and publicity. We shared the types of individuals and organizations we’ve been reaching out to (like celebrities and companies).
Articles continue to be written about our efforts:
Coca-Cola announced new leadership at Coca-Cola North America–so we asked TaB drinkers to write these new leaders a letter about TaB. We put together templates to help make it easier (and we also encouraged personal letters to be written). We ended up with hundreds of downloads (and we hope) letters mailed and sent!
November
SaveTaBSoda and Save Northern Neck Ginger Ale groups went head-to-head in a calling competition. We wanted to see who could make the most calls and e-mails to Corporate asking for our favorite sodas back. When we call Coca-Cola to let them know about TaB, we’re all winners.
Articles continue to be written about our efforts (and one of them was in a print magazine in Atlanta!)
Season’s Greetings TaB Fans! We hope the holiday season is treating you well.
The month of December can be a busy one. Chances are, you’ve got a lot going on. Shopping, planning, baking, attending get-togethers, and much more. And we at the SaveTaBSoda Committee do as well. But we’re never too busy for TaB!!
While we’re working on a few upcoming ideas for 2023 behind the scenes, we need to ensure that Coca-Cola is well aware that ALL OF US are still out here and we want our TaB back!
Those of us in the Committee continue to call and e-mail Coca-Cola regularly. Please join us to help keep the attention on TaB.
We’d really appreciate if you would take a few minutes out of your busy schedule this month to remind Coca-Cola you want TaB back on store shelves.
What: Contact Coca-Cola and ask them to bring back your favorite soda (TaB and/or Northern Neck Ginger Ale)
How: Every day, Monday through Friday (11/7-11/11), please make a call to Coca-Cola (800.GET.COKE) and/or e-mail them using their contact us form (Contact Us Form | The Coca-Cola Company) and let them know you would like to see your favorite soda back on store shelves. If you are willing, make multiple calls and send multiple e-mails to let them know you really want it back. At the end of each day, submit this form telling us how many calls you made and e-mails you sent.
Which group will make the most contacts? TaB fans? Northern Neck Ginger Ale fans? Or will it be a tie? Which fanbase is the most invested in seeing their soda back on store shelves? We’ll see! Regardless of who has the most contacts, we must keep letting Coca-Cola know that there is demand for these discontinued products to stand a chance of getting them back.
Coke leadership changes provide an opportunity for us, those who love TaB soda, to reach someone new who might be interested in revisiting the TaB cancellation.Let’s write some letters!!
Both Coca-Cola veterans will report up through the chief executive officer, Mr. James Quincey.
Letter-Writing Campaign
We are undertaking a letter-writing campaign where we are asking all TaB drinkers to write letters to both new executives to provide a congratulations and a formal ask to bring TaB back. We hope they will be willing to listen to us and work with the CEO and other executive leadership to bring TaB back. Timing
We’ll start writing letters right away, and will continue through the middle of October. Let’s continue to deliver letters to these new leaders to let them know we are not giving up on TaB.
Easy Templates
We’d prefer if each of you wrote a personal letter to these two executives…. But, we understand writing letters can be time-consuming. So if you don’t have that kind of time, and still want to participate—we’ve made it super simple for you. Just download our pre-written templates, print them out, fill in your personal details, and mail! You can also add a handwritten note to the letter for a personal touch! Or use ours as a template to write your own. Make sure to ask for a response back!
Feel free to send at least one to each executive from yourself and one from every other member of your household!
We’ll track the downloads of our template and let you know how many letters Mr. Murphy and Ms. Mann should expect to receive during the next several weeks.
Thanks in advance for your help and participation in this effort!
In addition to getting the TaB billboards up and working on media coverage for them we wanted to let you know that that’s not the only thing we’ve been working on.
This blog post shares some of the many other efforts we’ve undertaken to save TaB, and we’d like to enlist your help with any possible sources, contacts, or other suggestions to help in our work. Please see our How You Can Help at the bottom.
Writing to Executives at Coca-Cola
We’ve been reaching out via letters and e-mails to many of the executives at Coca-Cola. From the CEO all the way to division leaders–if we’ve located contact information for them, we’ve attempted to reach them with ideas for how to bring the product back, as well as the stories of the TaB drinking community.
We’ve kept an eye out for new open job positions at Coca-Cola and have reached out to newly hired employees as well to let them know about the importance of TaB.
We’ve also reached out to some former Coca-Cola employees to try to gain insights into what it would take to convince Coca-Cola to bring TaB back.
Retail Partners
We’ve been reviewing the various retailers who offer Coca-Cola products for sale, and have been trying to identify those who would be the best ally to help up convince Coca-Cola to bring TaB back.
We’ve written to executives and key personnel at those organizations to explain our goal of getting TaB back in consumers’ hands. If Coca-Cola doesn’t want to listen to consumers, maybe they’ll listen to one of their retailer customers (that’s our hope, and we continue to pursue this).
The Bottlers
Not only have we been calling, e-mailing, and writing to specific Coca-Cola Bottlers (in hopes we’d find one who likes TaB), we’ve also written to Industry Trade Organizations to try to gain additional insight into the Coca-Cola System.
If we can find a Bottler and a Retailer who both believe TaB should make a comeback, we have a stronger case.
News Media
We’ve been contacting SO MANY news media resources, from television stations, radio stations, online websites, you name it.
We’re trying to reach writers, editors, content producers, bloggers–anyone who will talk to us. We know there’s a great story to be written about TaB and its loyal fans. And anything written about us to show we’re still out here, and we still want TaB–is beneficial to our cause.
Outside the Box Ideas…
Would Someone Else Make TaB?
We’ve reached out to Craft Soda Companies and other entities to see if we could find one interested in licensing the TaB formula to produce it in small batches for the Fan Community.
We’ve even asked if companies would be interested in creating a “TaB-Like” diet cola sweetened with Saccharin.
We continue our efforts in this area to see if we can find a good partner.
Could Coke’s Competitors Help Us?
What if Pepsi brought back Pepsi Light (with Saccharin?)
What if we found another competitor who brought back some product in the same category as TaB to lure customers over to them?
We continue to ask and see if we find interest.
Celebrities
TaB’s been in so many commercials and movies. We’ve reached out to all celebrities that we have found with any connection to TaB to see if they’d mention our cause on social media. We’ve even reached out to celebrities with no connnection to TaB to see what might happen.
Celebrities are harder to reach than most–we’ve used social media so far. If anyone knows how to get in touch with celebrities’ agents–let us know.
Hollywood Execs
We’ve contacted production companies, propmasters, casting directors, you name it. We’re trying to find a way to get TaB placed in upcoming TV Shows or movies to help the general public gain interest in the product.
Social Media Influencers
We’ve reached out to social media influencers (those are people with lots of followers!) in the food and beverage space to see if any of them have an interest in doing a post about TaB. The more people who learn about it, the better–we say.
3D Beverage Printers and other new product companies
We’ve reached out to other companies in the beverage space. From those who claim they can “3D Print” any flavor, to those who produce syrups for at-home soda machines. We want to find a partner who would help bring that TaB flavor back to market.
How You Can Help!
There are two things you can do that would be very helpful right now.
1-Personal Connections
Now that we’ve shared the list of entities we are contacting, we’d like to know if you know someone in one of those categories that could help us. Do you have a contact? We’re finding that it’s very challenging to get anyone to even acknowledge or respond to us. Sometimes it takes a personal connection to help open a door. Maybe someone you know can be that personal connection. Please let us know!
Specifically, do you have a friend or relative with a contact who will talk with us or work with us at one of these companies (Costco, Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, etc.)
Or do you have contacts who work in news media?
Do you have kids or grandkids who follow influencers on social media? Ask them who they follow and if they have any suggestions on who we should reach out to–or maybe they’d reach out on our behalf?
2-Online Article Outreach
Whenever we see an article that’s relevant to TaB (like Taco Bell pizza coming back, or the Choco Taco being discontinued after 40 years, for example), we contact the author of that article, and YOU SHOULD TOO! Tell them about all of the TaB drinkers who refuse to give up on their favorite soda! In addition to that, you should comment about savetabsoda.com in the article’s comment section. The more people who find out about us, the better.
When engaging–please always share our website (Savetabsoda.com) as this points individuals to our Facebook group, our petition where we are collecting signatures, our fundraiser, and the Coca-Cola contact information. It’s the best place to point someone who is new to our cause. And feel free to tag us on social media when you are replying to posts. We’ll chime in too. We’re @SaveTaBSoda. Our preferred hashtag is #SaveTaBSoda
Please share any leads you might have by contacting us.
In our next post, we’ll be collecting additional ideas from the TaB community on our next big project.
As we previously shared, our Billboards were live in Atlanta, and were up for a full month, coming down just recently, on Monday July 10th.
A HUGE Thank You to everyone who donated to make those a reality! We couldn’t have done it without your generous donations.
Now that the billboards are down, we wanted to share a little bit more information about how that event played out.
We launched the billboards on Monday, June 13th. At that time, we had one of our members go down to the two site locations and take photographs of them so we could promote them on social media and other channels.
On June 15th, we launched a national press release about the billboards to gain national coverage. In early July, we launched a second regional press release about the billboards to gain coverage in Georgia.
In addition to media coverage about the billboards (more on that below), we also know that Coca-Cola executives did read our press release–and we also sent them a letter with a formal request to speak with them about the billboards and our request to bring back TaB (we’re still awaiting a response.)
We learned a lot doing this event:
We learned how to raise funds from the TaB drinking community for a group project.
We learned how to engage in contracts with entities such as the outdoor advertising company and the press release firm.
We found out it’s a LOT of work coming up with the billboard designs, as well as working through the legal hurdles around what we were permitted to place on them (especially with a group of volunteers working on it who also have day jobs).
It’s expensive doing press releases, and we are still learning about the differences we get in coverage from paid media (press release) versus earned media (when a reporter just decides to write about us).
Media Coverage:
(this is as of July 14th)
287 news outlets did an EXACT Match placement of our press release (meaning they posted it word-for-word on their website).
Outlets included entities such as: Local stations (Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC), Newspapers, Online Media, etc. (see graphs below):
Release Views
To date, we’ve had over 3,000 direct views of the news release. This could be by general consumers or by members of the news media. These releases also help people find out about our efforts to save TaB when they are doing google searches online. The more articles and web publications that have an article (or press release) written about our efforts, the more likely it is to be picked up in search results–which points people directly to our website, the petition to sign, and the number at Coca-Cola to call.
Articles Written
In addition to the exact match placements, we have had at least two articles written about the billboards by journalists. It’s difficult for us to scour all of the internet to see where else we might show up, so if you find one, let us know!
While we’re really excited about all of the coverage we received so far–we’re still trying to reach additional journalists! Even though our billboards are no longer up, we believe there’s quite a story to tell about a group of soda drinkers who care so much for their favorite soda, they’d raise funds to erect billboards in an effort to bring it back!
If you have any media contacts or ideas of who we should be talking to, let us know!
Next Up
Please stay tuned for some updates on what else we’ve been working on behind the scenes this summer, as well as a call for suggestions on our next group activity. We may not have TaB back yet, but we’re in this for the long haul, and we’re only getting started…
Thank YOU to everyone who donated—We have two billboards live with five rotating images up for 30 days!
Help Us! Let’s use this momentum to Contact Coca-Cola every single day the billboards are up. Call (800.GET.COKE) or E-mail Them using their contact form.
We’re going to need to raise funds again. And we’ll be announcing our next event soon.
THANK YOU!
First, and most important—THANK YOU to every single person who donated to our fundraiser to help us make the billboards a reality. With the donations we received, we were able to acquire two digital locations in Atlanta (a larger one on Luckie St & Ivan Allen Jr BLVD Intersection—facing Coca-Cola Headquarters and near World of Coca-Cola, and a smaller one on Piedmont Road & Dan Lane—a busy intersection with lots of traffic). These digital billboards will rotate in 10 second intervals on the signs for the next 30 days (6/13-7/12).
The Campaign
Our billboards contain five different ads from us. The larger billboard is targeting Coca-Cola directly (because it faces Coca-Cola). The message to Coca-Cola is very simple and to the point. Paraphrased, it’s: We want to buy TaB again.Sincerely, us.
The logo-less can (we were not permitted to use the TaB logo) helps to evoke the “missing” aspect of TaB. That bright, striped, recognizable can really shows up well on these lighted billboards and grabs the attention of passersby right away.
The smaller billboards are also targeting Coca-Cola, but secondly, they are intended to interest other consumers in our cause—and drive them to our website where we’re collecting signatures and raising funds for the next activity. We’re using a testimonial style billboard to help others see that TaB isn’t just an ordinary soda. It’s something people will go WAY out of their way to make a part of their lives.
We hope you enjoy the billboard designs—below.
Press Release
We’ve issued a national press release about the committee and the billboards, in hopes that we’ll see some stories picked up about our efforts.
How can You help?
While these billboards are up, we need every single person who ever wanted TaB back to contact Coca-Cola and let them know how much it means to them. Call every day (800.GET.COKE).
Tell them about the billboards.
Tell them if you donated your own money to the billboard campaign (because you couldn’t buy TaB).
Make sure to politely request that they bring TaB back into production.
Our committee continues to contact the Coca-Cola Company to make formal requests for TaB, and we’ve reached out to them directly regarding the billboards–to see if they’ll speak with us.
Remember—every single voice helps, and we can’t make any progress without all of YOU letting Coca-Cola know you want TaB back.
Additionally, we hope to see more signatures on the petition during this time of heightened awareness of our efforts. Please continue to share the petition around—and if you see any articles online with comment sections discussing TaB—make sure you drop the link to the petition out there and ask people to sign it! (https://www.change.org/savetabsoda)
Next Steps
The Committee spent the funds we raised for the billboard activity, so stay tuned for additional information soon about our upcoming efforts. In the meantime, if you are willing to help us raise funds to help jumpstart our next activity, please visit our fundraising site.
Photos & Design Mockups of the billboard designs that rotate through them are below:
It took some time, but we’ve reached a new milestone on our change.org petition–5,000+ signatures.
Let’s all take a moment to celebrate this achievement! But we won’t rest for long. We hope to grow our supporter base this summer with upcoming events and have plenty of work to do. Stay tuned to SaveTaBSoda.com for the latest information.
We are working on a new project starting in May, and we need your help. We would like to build an online archive of photographs from TaB drinkers that shows how we’ve spent the past 59 years with TaB! As we all know—TaB is more than just a beverage, to us. Let’s show Coca-Cola (and other important stakeholders) how we made TaB a major part of our lives!
For those of you who have been following the SaveTaBSoda efforts for a while, you may remember last year when we collected stories and photographs from TaB drinkers to create a printed book that we sent to Coca-Cola stakeholders. This new idea expands upon that—printed books were nice—but this new concept will allow us all to view the finished product! And, as a bonus, it will be easier for all of us to share the completed archive around with important stakeholders when it’s in a digital form.
Please look through your own personal photos, and if you have one (or many) photos that you’d like to send us to be part of this archive, please upload them at the link below.
The only real “rules” are that you have to be the owner of the photograph and be willing to provide SaveTaBSoda permission to use the photo. Anything TaB-related is fair game!
We hope this will be a fun final product that we can all enjoy—and will serve a dual purpose of helping to tell the story of TaB drinkers to others who are interested in helping our cause. Plus—we’ll start sharing fun photos on our Instagram and Twitter account and more!
Some ideas for submissions:
You drinking TaB!
Family members drinking TaB!
TaB apparel
TaB collectibles and decor
TaB holiday items
TaB-themed food items (birthday cakes!)
TaB artwork or drawings
Anything else TaB-related you can think of!
Photos can be new; they can be old—we’d love a mixture of both!
IMPORTANT: This activity has ended. Uploads are no longer being accepted.
Save TaB Soda 