Coca Cola

Coca Cola was created by Pharmacist Dr. John Styth Pemberton. He developed the formula for the famous soft drink in his backyard on May 8, 1886. Dr. Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, came up with the idea for the unique cursive logo that has been the trade mark ever since. On May 29, 1886 the very first ad appeared in the Atlanta Journal:

Coca-Cola. Delicious! Refreshing! Exhilarating! Invigorating! The New and Popular Soda Fountain Drink, containing the properties of the wonderful Coca plant and the famous Cola nuts. For sale by Willis Venable and Nunnally & Rawson.

Dr. Pemberton died shortly after this ad and sales plummeted. Robinson didn’t want the business to fail and decided advertising was at fault- “people did not know what they were missing.”

After the Coca Cola trademark had been patented, Asa G. Candler, an Atlanta businessman, purchased the rights to the product and formed the corporation, “The Coca-Cola Company.” He began the push on Coca-Cola advertising by giving thousands of tickets away for free glasses of Coca- Cola, and advertising on outdoor posters, calendars, soda fountain urns, and wall murals and making Coke available everywhere. The invention of bottling in 1894 increased availability of the soft drink.

The company hired William D’Arcy in 1906 to head up advertising and he believed that advertising should show that Coca-Cola is a part of happy times in everyday life. This type of advertising was used for decades. One of the first newspaper ads showed a picture of Ty Cobb, a baseball star up at bat and said:

Something’s bound to happen—nerves a tingle—head whizzing. Crack!! Good boy Ty!! Safe!! And then you shout yourself hoarse. When it’s all over you’re hot, thirsty and limp. A cold, snappy drink of Coca-Cola will put you back in the game- relieve the thirst and cool you off.

D’Arcy found this baseball ad to be a success because everyone loves baseball. He felt as though it affected the reader’s senses which made him or her feel thirsty for a Coca-Cola. Other ads that appealed to the consumer’s sense of pleasure in associations with Coke included an ideal American girl drinking Coke, business men drinking Coke aboard an American Pullman train car and young people enjoying Coke out on a boat ride. In 1929 Coca-Cola’s most famous slogan, “The Pause That Refreshes...

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...ecial featuring Edgar Berger and Charlie McCarthy. Shortly after this came the sponsorship of Walt Disney’s TV premiere on Christmas Day of the same year. After fifty years D’Arcy closed its account with Coca-Cola and responsibilities for advertising was transferred to McCann-Erickson. They used everything that TV offered such as animation, stop motion and live action ads and coined the nationally known slogan “Things Go Better With Coke.” The first color ad was called the “Refrigerator-Man” and other famous TV ads were the “Hilltop” commercial, “Mean Joe Green”, and the “Northern Lights” which used the famous polar bear. In 2000 Coca-Cola launched an ambitious new international campaign using the slogan “Coca-Cola. Enjoy.”

After ninety nine years Coke had become such a part of American life, that when the company tried to introduce “new Coke” the public protested so strongly that the company had to bring back the original renamed “Coca-Cola classic.” Coca-Cola and its “Red, White and You” theme and its pleasant associations with people’s everyday happy family life made it a classic symbol of America. “Unmistakably Coca-Cola. Unmistakably American.”