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New Coke's day in the sun lasted 79 days. It was introduced on April 23, 1985 as a highly regarded replacement for old cola. But the outcry to take the original formula off the market was so violent that the Coca-Cola Company reversed course and brought back old cola 79 days later.

The new cola remained under one or the other brand name until 2002. The old cola, however, never became a favorite. It was always the old that outshone the new.

The Cola Wars of the 1970s and 1980s were a competition for the taste buds of America. To complete the Pepsi Challenge, the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) conducted extensive preference tests, which unequivocally determined that new cola was a better-tasting soda. However, the study never told respondents that the better tasting new product would completely replace the old brand. As a result, TCCC has never collected data that could reveal people's deep and lasting, if not always obvious, affection for the brand. It's surprising, of course, that TCCC didn't appreciate this at first – or rather surprising that TCCC got distracted and forgot about it – but it learned its lesson the hard way, just by tasting it. The TCCC research director admitted this when he told the New York Times the day after the original formula returned that people had "fallen in love with the memory of old cola."

The lesson of the new cola is an important principle to remember when thinking about whether something new and different is permanent or transient.

New against the memory of the old

When something is always on hand, people tend to take it for granted. But if it is taken away abruptly, it becomes apparent through its absence. When it comes to things with deep cultural connections, like old cola, what strikes people most is how much they like to remember them. In such cases, people want to get back what they have lost, which revives the old to the detriment and decline of the new.

During the pandemic barriers in the past few weeks, people have done many new things to replace the old things that were suddenly taken away from them – more online shopping as a replacement for in-store shopping; more virtual connections to replace personal connections; more videos to replace other conversations; more transport and delivery as a replacement on site and personally; and so on. But even though they have done all of these new things, many people have longed to return to the things that have been taken away.

The key question is how much of the new remains when the locks are released. Certainly some will stay. But much will go back to what it was before. In fact, we can already see that.

For example, Carnival Cruise Lines reported bookings increased 600 percent when it was announced that some of their cruise lines would reopen in August, an increase of 200 percent over August last year. The bars in Wisconsin were full the day after the state's Supreme Court overruled the governor's order to stay at home. Some stores in Belgium, including IKEA, Decathlon and Action, reported long lines of people waiting in line on the day all stores were allowed to reopen. In the UK, the DIY store B & Q saw large crowds when it reopened 155 stores in the fifth week of closure. Officials complained of the ruthless abandonment that crowded beaches and lakes on the weekend of the United States Memorial Day. In many U.S. states, reopening beaches and even wearing masks has become a matter of division policy.

With the choices and options reopening, many people – indeed, much more than expected – are streaming back to what they did before, rather than sticking to the new things they did during the closures. People missed a lot of what was taken away, and many people missed these things so much that they were ready to exercise caution at the first opportunity to go back.

Not everything got a boost. Some things, such as flight bookings and bus tours, haven't seen demand pick up yet. The perception of security plays a role in what comes back and what doesn't, but it is clear how and what people have done that security alone is not responsible. Then what's the difference between new coke that sticks and old coke that bounce back?

What is most valued is the easiest to see

It is easy to locate old coke. They are the products and activities with the greatest cultural resonance in people's lifestyles. Such things are usually taken for granted, so people don't usually wear them on their sleeves. But when asked, these are the things that affirm people who most clearly express their nostalgia for what they remember as the good life of the past, and so these things are often the most representative of them People's aspirations for the future.

Much of the discussion about the new normal after the pandemic presupposes that the involuntary but necessary experimentation with new things during the locks automatically results in old things being forgotten and dropped when the locks are released. But people weren't just exposed to new things. They were also reminded of old things that they had to do without. This memory can be a powerful motivator, and what motivates it is the return to "not new normality".

New cola often does not introduce anything new. Instead, it brings old coke back with all its might. And when that happens, the future looks much more like the old normal than the new.

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