Coca-Cola, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Coca-Cola comes up
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 4:31:47 Ben Gilbert Some other episodes you may like, the NFL, Coca-Cola, Vanguard, or if you're willing to dive very deep into the acquired back catalog, we've got Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm,
The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:16:09 David Rosenthal Great for their business like Coca-Cola or Mars or Lockheed.
- ▶ 3:15:48 Ben Gilbert Coca-Cola as well.
- ▶ 3:15:50 Ben Gilbert You won't believe this, in addition to Coca-Cola, Pepsi.
- ▶ 3:15:55 Ben Gilbert Coke actually didn't become the exclusive, uh, supplier sponsor until 1990.
- ▶ 4:30:00 Ben Gilbert If you like this episode, go check out our recent episodes on Vanguard, Ferrari, and Coca-Cola, and Back in the Archives, our two-part series on Nintendo.
Vanguard: The communist capitalist who saved investors a trillion dollars (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:07:24 Ben Gilbert You see it in the NFL with Coca-Cola, with Trader Joe's.
Formula 1: Fast cars, celebrities, and B2B software (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:26:57 Ben Gilbert And lastly, to our friends at Dilupa for providing us with some amazing financial models and spreadsheets of all the historical data on Formula One, just like they did for us on Coca-Cola and Google.
The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:16:16 Ben Gilbert And recent ones on Coca-Cola and Trader Joe's that were super, super fun.
10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:01 David Rosenthal At least a sort of, uh, pause and reflection, you know, to shout out the Coca-Cola episode on our journey to this point, and why Acquired has worked.
- ▶ 1:21:06 Michael Lewis Would you take Coca-Cola?
Coca-Cola: The Complete History & Strategy (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:14 David Rosenthal But you know, this might be why Coca-Cola is not a two trillion dollar company today.
- ▶ 4:21 Ben Gilbert Listeners, of course, this playbook is almost exactly what the Coca-Cola company has done, and they've done it over the course of 140 years.
- ▶ 4:31 Ben Gilbert It has its roots all the way back in the Civil War.
- ▶ 4:34 Ben Gilbert It grew up through the rise of the automobile, through the Great Depression, through two world wars.
- ▶ 4:39 Ben Gilbert It seamlessly and shamelessly integrated into the hippie culture of the seventies, and then, of course,
- ▶ 4:45 Ben Gilbert It had the epic Cola Wars of the eighties and onward.
- ▶ 5:11 Ben Gilbert And Coca-Cola was the
- ▶ 5:53 David Rosenthal Well, Ben, as you so aptly set up there, the story of the birth of Coca-Cola starts arguably with the birth of America as we know it today in a newly reunified United States of America following the Civil War.
- ▶ 6:18 David Rosenthal He says, Coca-Cola remains emblematic of the best and worst of America.
- ▶ 6:26 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola grew up with the country, shaping and shaped by the times.
- ▶ 12:02 David Rosenthal Pepper predates Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 12:06 David Rosenthal And, of course, Coca-Cola started just the same way as a patent medicine.
- ▶ 17:22 Ben Gilbert The book I was reading, which is called Secret Formula, it's a great book on the history of Coca-Cola that had access to all the corporate archives, really describes Pemberton in this phase as finding his capitalist streak, as sort of…
- ▶ 18:47 Ben Gilbert Fun story, in the original Coca-Cola, for the first, I don't know, couple decades, it actually had four times the amount of caffeine that
- ▶ 18:55 Ben Gilbert Coke does today, so it's effectively an energy drink, even leaving the cocaine aside.
- ▶ 19:36 Ben Gilbert And so the first version of Coca-Cola is a little tiny bit of the cola seed, just kind of to say that it's in there.
- ▶ 19:43 Ben Gilbert He's gonna call this thing Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 19:57 Ben Gilbert At last he stood on the verge of inventing Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 21:16 Ben Gilbert But with even a touch of the drug, in combination with the sugar and caffeine, four times the amount in today's Coke made Pemberton's concoction quite a stimulating beverage.
- ▶ 21:28 David Rosenthal As best as I was able to read from a few different sources, I think roughly once Coca-Cola starts being produced in that first decade, call it four or five glasses of Coca-Cola would be about the equivalent of a line of cocaine today.
- ▶ 21:44 Ben Gilbert Okay, so it would take a lot of Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 21:46 Ben Gilbert If you're drinking that much of that formula, you're having the equivalent of 16 Coke's worth of caffeine.
- ▶ 22:13 David Rosenthal Yes, but it lends the first half of the name, which Pemberton's business partner at the time, a guy named Frank Robinson, comes up with the simple, descriptive, perfect name for this new brew, Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 22:42 Ben Gilbert And so you have a product that for the next 140 years would be called Coca-Cola that contains really not very much coca and really not very much cola.
- ▶ 23:24 David Rosenthal Many of which are liquids, and that's also how carbonated water comes to the drugstores, because mineral water, carbonated water, is thought to be a health tonic, and so it all mixes together, and then over the years, these morph into…
- ▶ 23:50 Ben Gilbert Brings it down the street to the first drugstore, and that druggist, that proprietor, is the one who actually combines that syrup with the carbonated water and makes the choice, which I think could have gone either way, is it a still or a…
- ▶ 24:11 David Rosenthal Could you imagine Coke if it were still?
- ▶ 24:17 Ben Gilbert I mean, there was probably hundreds of things like Coke that were still that did not succeed.
- ▶ 24:21 David Rosenthal So, pretty quickly, Coca-Cola gets into market with these drugstores and soda fountains, and people love it.
- ▶ 24:49 David Rosenthal Like he writes out the Coca-Cola script logo that we still use to this day.
- ▶ 24:54 Ben Gilbert I read that this guy was Pemberton's bookkeeper, and yet he's the one who came up with the name Coca-Cola and the Spencerian script, the logo Coca-Cola, which has been unchanged other than just tightening it up a little bit since he…
- ▶ 25:32 David Rosenthal They decide that they are going to offer tickets to consumers redeemable at their local Atlanta soda fountains for free glasses of Coke.
- ▶ 25:46 David Rosenthal And they start mailing out these free Coke tickets or coupons, you might say, to every address in the Atlanta city directory.
- ▶ 26:02 David Rosenthal Not Coca-Cola salesmen, but salesmen that are selling a variety of different products.
- ▶ 26:31 David Rosenthal This becomes absolutely huge for Coca-Cola and integral to its success.
- ▶ 28:22 David Rosenthal So to further illustrate how awesome this is for the soda fountains, Coke, when they were selling gallons of syrup to the soda fountains, they sold them for about a dollar and 30 cents per gallon.
- ▶ 28:55 Ben Gilbert Pretty sweet deal if you can get it then and pretty sweet deal to be McDonald's today offering my large coke with a meal.
- ▶ 29:09 David Rosenthal So all of this happens within the first year, year and a half of Coca-Cola being on the market.
- ▶ 30:25 David Rosenthal Is really the person who creates the modern Coca-Cola company with Frank Robinson's help in 1892, which he incorporates as the definitive Coca-Cola company.
- ▶ 30:39 Ben Gilbert So David, this is the first professionally run version of the Coca-Cola company.
- ▶ 30:54 David Rosenthal Before the professionalization and the founding of the Coca-Cola company in 1887, so the first year that Coke the product is on the market.
- ▶ 31:02 David Rosenthal Pemberton and Robinson sell 600 gallons of Coca-Cola syrup to soda fountains, which equates to about 75,000 glasses of Coke served.
- ▶ 31:29 Ben Gilbert It's amazing, and in that next year, 1891, when Asa Candler buys the last piece to fully own Coca-Cola, he got an incredible deal.
- ▶ 32:02 David Rosenthal So in 1892, the first official year of operation of the Coca-Cola company, we have the books.
- ▶ 33:09 David Rosenthal And that's just for the Coca-Cola company.
- ▶ 33:19 David Rosenthal So the actual gross revenue of Coca-Cola in the marketplace in that first year is close to a quarter million dollars.
- ▶ 33:53 David Rosenthal So speaking of advertising costs, in the next few years, they invest heavily into advertising, and of course the Coca-Cola company does still right up through to this day.
- ▶ 34:06 David Rosenthal The advertising they were doing on the one hand is very different than Coca-Cola advertising today, and specifically it's different in that it's all purely
- ▶ 34:20 David Rosenthal Remember, they're still sort of positioning Coca-Cola as this dual use, refreshing beverage, non-alcoholic social drink, but also patent medicine.
- ▶ 34:33 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola is the ideal brain tonic and sovereign remedy for headache and nervousness.
- ▶ 34:49 David Rosenthal But what Robinson and Candler do do that is very much still on brand for Coke today is they are all about outdoor and point of sale signage and presence.
- ▶ 35:02 David Rosenthal So they put the script Coca-Cola logo everywhere across Atlanta.
- ▶ 35:23 David Rosenthal Let's make clocks all with the big Coca-Cola logo.
- ▶ 35:52 Ben Gilbert And Coca-Cola would design, pay for, fabricate, and deliver signs for drugstores that had the store name in big letters and Coca-Cola's name just as big.
- ▶ 36:09 Ben Gilbert Of these stores that effectively look like Coca-Cola stores.
- ▶ 36:13 Ben Gilbert It almost looks like they're franchising Coca-Cola rather than Coca-Cola just being a thing that's sold at the drugstores.
- ▶ 36:19 David Rosenthal It's so beautiful because like you said, it seems like they're franchising Coca-Cola with no capital investment and the drug stores freaking love it because they're making 80% retail margins on this Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 36:35 Ben Gilbert They want a big advertisement says we have Coke.
- ▶ 36:39 David Rosenthal So by 1898, Coca-Cola is distributing over one million branded promotional items
- ▶ 36:57 David Rosenthal All the Coca-Cola company is doing here is selling this concentrated syrup.
- ▶ 37:22 David Rosenthal So by 1895, Coca-Cola is being sold in at least one soda fountain in every single state and territory in the United States at this time.
- ▶ 37:35 Ben Gilbert Yeah.
- ▶ 38:06 Ben Gilbert And of course, as you would expect, in 1895, they trademark the Coca-Cola script for the first time.
- ▶ 38:52 David Rosenthal And then starts really emphasizing the drink Coca-Cola delicious, refreshing.
- ▶ 38:58 David Rosenthal This is really important because he's hitting on like, Hey, Coca-Cola is for everyone.
- ▶ 39:37 Ben Gilbert Well, at the same time, the company's like, we should
- ▶ 40:02 David Rosenthal He gives away the right to bottle and sell Coca-Cola for free.
- ▶ 40:14 Ben Gilbert As it was in that moment, but would be sort of Coca-Cola's second great business model innovation after couponing.
- ▶ 40:33 David Rosenthal They want to bottle Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 40:37 David Rosenthal They're convinced that bottling technology has matured enough at this point that they can now bottle fully mixed Coca-Cola beverages, and not only will they not go bad, it'll keep the carbonated fizz, it will still be delicious when opened…
- ▶ 41:18 David Rosenthal You let us buy Coca-Cola syrup from you, same as all the soda fountains are doing.
- ▶ 41:50 David Rosenthal For a token contract price of one dollar, which Candler never collects, the Coca-Cola company will sell
- ▶ 42:11 David Rosenthal Thomas and Whitehead will have the exclusive assignable right to market and sell bottled Coca-Cola for five cents per bottle.
- ▶ 42:42 David Rosenthal Thomas and Whitehead must use only Coca-Cola syrup.
- ▶ 42:56 David Rosenthal Will remain directly sold by the Coca-Cola company.
- ▶ 42:59 David Rosenthal And if they fail to supply enough product to meet the demand for bottled Coke in the territories that they have rights over, the contract will be forfeit.
- ▶ 43:10 David Rosenthal The Coca-Cola company will provide all advertising needs for the product and maintain all control over advertising.
- ▶ 43:35 Ben Gilbert So the Coca-Cola company, as long as this bottler continues to satisfy the demand and doesn't violate any of the other terms is obligated to keep selling syrup at one dollar per gallon.
- ▶ 44:09 David Rosenthal This lets the Coca-Cola company enter and scale the bottle business completely capital and investment free.
- ▶ 44:46 David Rosenthal And they start selling bottled Coke for the first time to groceries, stands, and saloons, as they put it.
- ▶ 44:54 David Rosenthal Obviously all three of those are pretty big markets for Coca-Cola today, especially the, you know, like groceries and stands, AKA gas stations, convenience stores, et cetera, et cetera.
- ▶ 45:07 Ben Gilbert And at this point in history in 1900, the Coca-Cola company is still just 20 employees.
- ▶ 45:41 David Rosenthal So they split up the territory across America and they say, great, we're going to assign the rights we have in this contract with the Coca-Cola company to our two separate companies.
- ▶ 46:06 Ben Gilbert It's a kind of low margin, very upfront capital intensive thing to bottle Coca-Cola.
- ▶ 46:31 David Rosenthal And so basically overnight, first dozens and then hundreds of local Coca-Cola bottling operations pop up in these entrepreneurial endeavors in basically every town and countryside across America.
- ▶ 46:47 Ben Gilbert That have no contractual relationship with the Coca-Cola company.
- ▶ 47:15 Ben Gilbert Set up in between the Coca-Cola company that owns the intellectual property and makes the syrup and markets it and the bottlers who are actually doing the work, and they're just clipping little coupons as the money flies by on the way over…
- ▶ 48:09 David Rosenthal So basically this creates a second wave of blitzscaling, if you will, for the Coca-Cola company across America, because they'd already nationally expanded to soda fountains, but soda fountains are only in towns large enough to have a soda…
- ▶ 48:36 David Rosenthal The net of this is that within a few years, basically every single man, woman, and child in the United States becomes intimately aware of and familiar with Coca-Cola.
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