If watching people gratuitously dumping ice over their heads all summer long or cringing over the irreverent backpedaling of the NFL hasn’t convinced you of the global prowess the Internet bestows, do we have a humdinger for you.
Cover photo: Amazon.com / Body photos: Tom Cox
If watching people gratuitously dumping ice over their heads all summer long or cringing over the irreverent backpedaling of the NFL hasn’t convinced you of the global prowess the Internet bestows, do we have a humdinger for you.
Mother f’in SURGE is mother f’in back! To that our inner ‘90s say, “Oh snap pimpin’, talk to the hand, because the face ain’t listenin’”
On Monday, Sept 15 the Coca-Cola Company announced that they would unload a limited supply of the citrus drink, which was an extreme sports staple between 1996 and 2001. The iconic neon-splash logo became a ‘90s-kid identity as it attempted to trounce over PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew and its high caffeine, high sugar, high diabetes, high likelihood to kill you stake in the beverage industry.
How the reSURGEnce came to be, however, was nothing short of modern day genius and an act of endurance we’d usually credit to a 3 year old demanding authority to play that obnoxious Frozen song just one. more. time.
But it was adults, three grown-ass men, who persisted enough to get the behemoth company to listen through personal efforts and those of their followers on the SURGE Movement Facebook page. The page currently has 151,000 likes, and continues to grow as national attention highlights the comeback.
It was in late 2011 that Evan Carr says he was feeling reminiscent of the drink and wanted to see who else was out there in the big, beautiful world of ours who felt the same way. It was through the page that he e-met Matt Winans and Sean Sheridan who took part in steadily growing the online platform, eventually watching the global corporation fold and give in to high demand.
Through mass dial-and-demand movements and creative campaigning, such as a crowd-funded billboard close to the headquarters, the team influenced the company to rethink its cancellation of the drink and re-commercialize the nostalgia attached to the brand.
The taste of SURGE back in the late ‘90s was something that few could quite understand. It was citrus, sure, but packed a never before acquired punch that, in those days, could yank a slumbering koala out of its tree and get that cute little fucker on a table to Da’ Dip his short little lifespan away. There was no such thing as overly energizing Monsters or Rockstars in the days of yore, which made the relatively high caffeine content seem far more potent.
Tom Cox, one of the original creators of the SURGE logo and brand says that he was pretty young when he started at Coke and full of “piss and vinegar” when he began the drink's identity process. Companies didn’t value branding then as much as they do now so his opportunity, he says, was because his talents were more up to date with current software than his peers.
“When I started there, people still smoked in their offices,” says Cox. “I was really just a punk two years out of college and through a family friend got an interview. I got the job because I knew how to use the Mac to produce packaging artwork for printing. Thankfully, I was too young to know better, and once I was in just started designing stuff whether I was asked to or not. It paid off when art directors and brand managers noticed and before long all I was doing was designing for brands. While there, I designed the Always Coca-Cola logo, the look of the Super Bowl for Coca-Cola, of course SURGE, and worked on many other brands throughout the company.”
Cox says that the drink coming back after a 13-year hiatus wasn’t something he expected, but he’s still extremely satisfied to have something that he worked so hard on be able to make another statement that he initially conceived long ago.
“Obviously the impetus for the brand was to compete with Mountain Dew, which we approached by being the opposite of Dew,” he says. “Dew was going overboard with the whole ‘extreme fantasy skater dude’ aesthetic.' (So) we focused on being real world, hanging out with friends, and just being stupid. From that point of view I focused on creating a brand visual identity that was created by hand. Something that looked like someone in the target demographic had created.
But the real story is whether or not he’s getting hooked up with free cases of the stuff now that it’s back.
“I hope so,” he says. “I have a few friends still there and hope they can deliver the goods! When I was working on SURGE, my wife and I were expecting our first child. He stared college this year. I'm excited to have my kids be able to taste it.”
The iconic drink is currently only sold on Amazon.com, but sells out immediately after the cases are restocked. Some vendors are gouging awaiting consumers, with one outlet wanting as much as $155 .55 for a 12-pack. Via its online site the SURGE Movement promises that more will be in stock soon, and the ultimate goal going forward is to eventually get larger distribution to select parts of the country.
Until then, say it with us now, “SUUUUUUURRRGGGEEE!!!!!“
Leave a Reply