Surge Soda's Facebook Fans Push Coca-Cola to Revive the Drink

Evan Carr wasn’t happy when Coca-Cola discontinued Surge soda in 2001. The quality-control specialist drank a lot of the sweet, caffeinated, citrus-flavored soda as a teen. Surge was best on a hot day, after a bike ride, he says. “It was really a thirst quencher for me.”

Never fully accepting the loss, in December 2011, Carr set up a Facebook page called The Surge Movement where fans could commiserate. In the spring of 2013 he launched a full-blown lobbying campaign that included calls and e-mails to Coke. The 26-year-old Carr and his cohorts raised $4,000 through crowdfunding for a billboard near the company’s Atlanta headquarters that read: “Dear Coke, We couldn’t buy Surge so we bought this billboard instead.”