[You may wonder why these drinks taste so awful. Apparently, awful is the point.] Not tasting great might have the potential of helping the product, ... That it has this medicinal quality kind of underlines why you're consuming the product, because it provides energy.

There's so many new drinks that are fruity, sweet, kind of taste like soda. It's an easy way to introduce someone to alcohol. ... In the old days, when people wanted to do research on alcohol using rats, to get them to initiate drinking you had to introduce sugar to make them drink. We used to do it with rats. Now we do it with people.

It's not that they can't be successful, ... It's just that the bulk of the market in the U.S. tends to be middle- and low-price brands. You really have to tell a compelling story to convince people to pay more.

It is a rapidly changing beverage landscape and it is important for Coke to move quickly to deliver on what the consumer wants. The competition for shelf space is intense.

There are quite a few premium soda brands, but the vast majority are regional or local, (with) fairly limited distribution and availability. And distribution -- getting your product from the plant to the retailer -- is probably the single greatest challenge for beverage companies today.

They may not be drinking more, but they're drinking better.