Welcome to I Am Your Target Demographic and today we’re discussing Coca-Cola.
Some history, some facts, and a general sense of the company.
Our story begins in 1885, when a former confederate colonel named John Pemberton created a drink
that served as a replacement for morphine.
He was wounded in the war and didn’t want to rely on morphine, so this drink helped
to ease him off of it.
He pitched this drink also to help with things like nerve disorders and headaches, almost
a cure-all elixir.
It originally included alcohol, but with prohibition, Pemberton created a non-alcoholic formula.
It was called Coca-Cola because it contained extract from the coca plant, which also creates
the narcotic cocaine.
The amount of cocaine in the early days is incredibly minimal though, and it was also
present in most other medicines of the time as well.
The last traces of cocaine were removed by 1929.
Some of the videos I’m using here are courtesy of a Comedy Central segment of “Drunk History”
retelling this account.
Anyways, back to its origin.
After Pemberton created Coca-Cola, it becomes a little confusing.
Different businesses were creating the drink, with various agreements with Pemberton.
He owned the name Coca-Cola but allowed different manufacturers to use his formula.
There wasn’t much proof of any of this, mostly being verbal agreements.
Eventually, the formula and the name were purchased by a businessman by the name of
Asa Candler, who really launched Coca-Cola into fame and later became mayor of Atlanta, Georgia.
There are several buildings and monuments in Atlanta named after him.
How Candler got the rights to Coca-Cola is a little mysterious, as he was contested by
Pembertons’s son and another co-owner that claims her signature was forged.
It’s hard to know what really happened but one tale, perhaps an urban legend, says that
Candler bought the rights from John Pemberton’s wife at his funeral so that the younger Pemberton
wouldn’t have a chance to deny him.
Let’s get past all this drama.
Coca-Cola began being bottled through the south, with Candler contracting out the bottling
to a company in Tennessee.
The home of Coca-Cola remained Atlanta though, where Pemberton originally conceived and starting
selling the syrup.
Coca-Cola took off with an aggressive marketing campaign from Candler throughout the early 1990s.
In 1935, Coca-Cola was able to create kosher beverages, which allowed more people to enjoy.
It was 1955 when the first aluminum cans of Coke were created, as opposed to the traditional glass bottles.
At this time, Coke was nationally known, though it was in a heated race with its major competitor Pepsi.
Pepsi launched a nationwide campaign called the Pepsi Challenge, which was a blind taste
test to prove that people preferred Pepsi over Coke.
This campaign helped get Pepsi notable interest but Coca-Cola never lost its foothold.
Across the world to this day, Coke still outsells Pepsi, though there are definite locations
where Pepsi is more dominant, however rare those regions may be.
With the success of Coke came offshoots like Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke with Lime, and more.
In the mid 80s, they tried to launch a “New Coke” to better compete with Pepsi but this
was seen as a huge mistake and it wasn’t long before they reverted to their original formula.
Let’s talk about Coke’s marketing and how they became so prominent.
One of their most successful ad campaigns is a yearly campaign focused on the Christmas holiday.
There’s a popular theory that Coke invented the old bearded version of Santa Claus, though
this theory is mostly false.
Did they invent that image?
No.
Did they maybe make that image popular?
Possibly.
Even to this day, Coke’s holiday advertisements are heartfelt and notable, now with the trademark
polar bears always enjoying a nice cold bottle.
In the mid 80s, Coca-Cola even went as far as to purchase Columbia Pictures in order
to create movies, which were often loaded with product placement.
There were a few hits, like Ghostbusters, but many more flops, so Coke eventually sold
the studio to Sony.
More recently, they’ve had successful marketing efforts including the “open happiness”
era which paired a catchy jingle with an positive message, and followed up with the “Share
a Coke” campaign, where bottles were now labeled with names, encouraging you to find
bottles with your friends’ names and to, as the name implies, share a Coke with them.
So where do you stand?
Are you a Coke person?
Or a Pepsi person?
Does their marketing work for you?
Let me know all your thoughts in the comments below and hopefully you learned something interesting.