Coca-Cola, every mention

Coca-Cola: The Complete History & Strategy (Audio) · Acquired Nov 24, 2025 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 1:15:18 David Rosenthal With the grand slam mother of them all, the pause that refreshes Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:16:07 David Rosenthal And so all through the thirties of the depression, this idea that Coke is a pause away from the harsh realities of your day-to-day existence in the depression, a simple luxury that you can take a pause and refresh with for only five cents…
• ▶ 1:16:43 David Rosenthal So Lee goes out and he contracts with all these famous American artists and illustrators of the day to create these like American lifestyle tableaus for the visual aspects of the Coke ads.
• ▶ 1:16:57 Ben Gilbert Yeah, it should be like a Coca-Cola advertisement that's as.
• ▶ 1:17:21 David Rosenthal It's all coming out of the Coca-Cola ad department.
• ▶ 1:17:56 David Rosenthal Not only that, but they must remember that it was Coca-Cola that was refreshing and good to drink in the image.
• ▶ 1:18:03 David Rosenthal And so he and the Darcy agency come up with a list of commandments for the Coca-Cola account.
• ▶ 1:18:09 David Rosenthal Some of them are never split the trademark Coca-Cola on two lines.
• ▶ 1:18:14 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola must always be together on one line.
• ▶ 1:18:23 David Rosenthal You should never refer to Coca-Cola as it is not an impersonal pronoun.
• ▶ 1:18:28 David Rosenthal It is Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:18:29 David Rosenthal And you should never use Coca-Cola in the personal sense, such as Coca-Cola invites you to lunch or Coca-Cola invites you to enjoy.
• ▶ 1:18:38 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola is above that.
• ▶ 1:18:43 Ben Gilbert By 1930, there are now twenty nine million cars on the road, so billboards sort of became this really valuable way to promote the brand and lifestyle of Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:18:54 Ben Gilbert And Woodruff, his lieutenants, would often go around saying that what Woodruff wants to do is make Coca-Cola the most American thing in America.
• ▶ 1:19:14 David Rosenthal Because in 1931, Lee and Woodruff and the Coca-Cola crew create what I think is unquestionably the greatest lifestyle advertising success in human history, where they manage to associate Santa Claus with Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:19:42 Ben Gilbert The one that we see today is pretty much Coca-Cola's Santa.
• ▶ 1:19:48 David Rosenthal Coke does not invent Santa as a, you know, common urban legend.
• ▶ 1:19:54 David Rosenthal The concept of Santa Claus existed long before 1931 in Coke.
• ▶ 1:20:35 David Rosenthal Or he was before Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:20:37 David Rosenthal So in 1931, Coke commissions the artist Haddon Sunbloom to create Christmas ad imagery for Coca-Cola featuring Santa Claus.
• ▶ 1:20:47 David Rosenthal And so this being a Coke ad, Sunbloom is like, well,
• ▶ 1:20:51 David Rosenthal I'm gonna make Santa as red as possible in Coca-Cola red, and then I'm gonna make him as big as possible to get as much Coca-Cola red in the picture.
• ▶ 1:21:01 David Rosenthal So he creates the first of his Coca-Cola Santa campaigns that he would make for the next 33 years until 1964, and it debuts at Christmas time in a full-color
• ▶ 1:21:56 David Rosenthal All of a sudden now Coke's got this huge industrial imagery machine of not only advertisements in the Saturday evening post, but all the billboards and the signs and the point of sale merchandise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• ▶ 1:22:18 Ben Gilbert Which is funny because Pepsi also did do some Santa illustrations, but Coke kind of ran away with it, and it became clear pretty early.
• ▶ 1:22:26 Ben Gilbert Coke is just going to own Santa.
• ▶ 1:22:54 Ben Gilbert And this was really the nail in the coffin for Coke being a summer drink.
• ▶ 1:22:58 Ben Gilbert I've heard that the most Coke is now sold during the holidays, which is amazing since it was a refreshing thing served for the hot Atlanta summers.
• ▶ 1:23:19 Ben Gilbert Coca-Cola was a sponsor of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, which makes them the longest running Olympic sponsor.
• ▶ 1:23:28 Ben Gilbert And at the L.A. 28 games that will make 100 years of Coca-Cola partnering with the Olympics.
• ▶ 1:23:46 David Rosenthal Yeah, man, no Coca-Cola, no Visa.
• ▶ 1:23:49 Ben Gilbert Right, and this predates all the stuff that Coca-Cola did with the World's Fair, and with World Cup, and with all these other big, sort of, global brand stage events.
• ▶ 1:24:16 Ben Gilbert No changes to the Coca-Cola formula.
• ▶ 1:24:19 Ben Gilbert Woodruff's Coca-Cola was that 65 year unchanged formula.
• ▶ 1:24:42 Ben Gilbert It was his idea that wherever you are, when you reach for a Coke, it should feel the same.
• ▶ 1:25:24 David Rosenthal The Coca-Cola version of Hersheypark.
• ▶ 1:25:50 Ben Gilbert It was an effort in 20 11 to kind of shake the public, and especially the younger generations, and say, we are Coca-Cola, and we have the one secret formula, and we want to bring it back to your attention that we have something that is…
• ▶ 1:26:04 David Rosenthal The other thing Woodruff does in these early years is he creates the company's first
• ▶ 1:26:26 David Rosenthal So what they need to do is they need to find ways for existing Coca-Cola drinkers to access and drink Coca-Cola more often.
• ▶ 1:26:37 David Rosenthal Before he negotiated with his dad to come to Coca-Cola, he was at the white motor company and he was being recruited by Standard Oil of New Jersey.
• ▶ 1:26:48 David Rosenthal He's like, guys, we need to get Coca-Cola into gas stations.
• ▶ 1:26:53 David Rosenthal So he decrees that gas stations is the next major growth opportunity for the company.
• ▶ 1:27:00 David Rosenthal We need to take that opportunity to put a Coke in their hands.
• ▶ 1:27:05 David Rosenthal A design for a cooler, because if you're going to keep Coke's ice cold at 34 degrees in gas stations, they need to be in a cooler.
• ▶ 1:27:14 David Rosenthal They get a company to manufacture it, and they go around the country and install 32,000 Coca-Cola coolers in gas stations around the country just in the first year.
• ▶ 1:27:25 Ben Gilbert And giant signs, right, that say Coca-Cola sold here, or drink Coca-Cola, or Coca-Cola always refreshing.
• ▶ 1:27:40 David Rosenthal And Coke is the first company to do that.
• ▶ 1:27:43 Ben Gilbert And someone told me in the research that the gas station owners absolutely loved this because a, the signs told people, you can come get a Coke here, which was a value proposition for people.
• ▶ 1:28:01 Ben Gilbert Of soft drinks, especially at this time, that they were making more money on coke than gas.
• ▶ 1:28:18 David Rosenthal You make money on the convenience store, starting with coke.
• ▶ 1:28:23 David Rosenthal The other big change in operations that Robert brings to the company is
• ▶ 1:29:00 David Rosenthal And so he changes course for the Coca-Cola company and says, I'm now willing to buy and own and operate bottlers.
• ▶ 1:29:42 David Rosenthal Same model, local entrepreneurs, locally owned businesses with every incentive in the world to push Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:30:19 Ben Gilbert The con is obviously, well, inflation's gonna happen, and so our margins are gonna get squeezed, where it's just gonna cost more and more and more to make Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:30:48 Ben Gilbert They wanted to be the one Coca-Cola for the world, but this really backed them into that strategy as you don't have another strategy.
• ▶ 1:31:11 David Rosenthal To retailers at the enforced retail price of five cents a Coke.
• ▶ 1:31:24 David Rosenthal Because all the other competitors who are at much smaller scale than Coke, as the depression hits and inflation starts running rampant, they need to raise their prices.
• ▶ 1:31:34 David Rosenthal But here's Coke, which is
• ▶ 1:31:38 David Rosenthal It's certainly superior in that its brand recognition is much wider than any competing Cola and Coke is cheaper.
• ▶ 1:32:02 David Rosenthal Coke is just steamrolling all existing and potential competition out there.
• ▶ 1:32:15 David Rosenthal Yes, but I think the competition was having to hit the nickel price to try and compete with Coke and their margins because they were subscale would be much, much, much worse.
• ▶ 1:32:24 Ben Gilbert Coke can be profitable at way lower end consumer prices than the other subscale companies.
• ▶ 1:32:54 Ben Gilbert Which amazingly started way back when Coca-Cola started.
• ▶ 1:33:10 David Rosenthal Pepsi tried to sell itself to Coca-Cola, like sell its operations to Coca-Cola three separate times over the years.
• ▶ 1:33:23 David Rosenthal And Coca-Cola, you know, the various owners over the years turned it down three times.
• ▶ 1:33:37 David Rosenthal So, Coke, like we've just been saying, is selling for a nickel, and it's super hard for anybody else to match it.
• ▶ 1:34:51 Ben Gilbert That exists today is like four Pepsis later from the Pepsi that was started around the same time Coca-Cola was.
• ▶ 1:34:59 Ben Gilbert Coca-Cola has been approximately one company all the way through.
• ▶ 1:35:21 David Rosenthal Now, they still have the same pricing pressure, you know, and margin pressure from Coke selling in a nickel, but it turns out if you look at the unit drivers of margins on beverages.
• ▶ 1:36:26 Ben Gilbert And that is the first real punch that anyone's been able to land on Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:36:36 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola cannot respond because they and their bottlers have just invested all of this capital and all of this IP into the six and a half ounce contour bottle.
• ▶ 1:37:36 David Rosenthal So Coke can't fight them on the amount of liquid in the bottle because they're locked into the six and a half ounce.
• ▶ 1:37:58 David Rosenthal So in this court process, the president of Pepsi at the time, a guy named Walter Mack ends up discovering that Coca-Cola had illegally bribed and intimidated
• ▶ 1:38:24 David Rosenthal Mac brings this evidence to the court where Coca-Cola is suing Pepsi for trademark infringement.
• ▶ 1:38:59 David Rosenthal The outcome of this is that Pepsi Cola becomes the only Coke competitor that is allowed to use the word Cola legally at this point in time.
• ▶ 1:39:07 Ben Gilbert Which destroys any precedent of Coca-Cola protecting Cola.
• ▶ 1:39:47 Ben Gilbert And doesn't Coca-Cola's general counsel quit over this too?
• ▶ 1:40:07 David Rosenthal So, the result of this is that Pepsi becomes Coke's first real legitimate competitor.
• ▶ 1:40:17 David Rosenthal Colas that are not Coca-Cola have 14% of the US soft drink market share, the majority of which is Pepsi.
• ▶ 1:40:29 David Rosenthal It's a major chick in the arm is basically a hundred percent Coke before this happened.
• ▶ 1:40:40 David Rosenthal So, you know, on the one hand, this is a real, uh, bad thing for the Coca-Cola company.
• ▶ 1:40:55 David Rosenthal But a really, really good thing is also about to happen to the Coca-Cola company that makes the U.S. market itself one of many, shall we say.
• ▶ 1:41:14 Ben Gilbert Gee, how did Coke end up all over the world?
• ▶ 1:41:30 David Rosenthal By the time America enters World War II in 1941, Coke at this point has already been around for 55 years, and has already established itself as like a quintessential part of America.
• ▶ 1:41:42 David Rosenthal So the military and the US government realize, hey, Coke may actually be one of America's best weapons in this war.
• ▶ 1:42:00 David Rosenthal And two, what greater symbol of American prosperity to bring and plant seeds of all around the world than Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:42:23 David Rosenthal One way or another, they ended up drinking Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:42:33 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola immediately lobbies the government for an exemption, and they produce supporting evidence like this letter from a military supply officer.
• ▶ 1:42:41 David Rosenthal Very few people have ever stopped to consider the great part that Coca-Cola plays in the building and maintaining of morale among military personnel.
• ▶ 1:42:50 David Rosenthal We would be at a loss to find anything as satisfying and refreshing a beverage to replace Coca-Cola.
• ▶ 1:42:57 David Rosenthal In our opinion, Coca-Cola could be classified as one of the essential morale building products for the boys in the service.
• ▶ 1:43:05 Ben Gilbert Which is interesting because what Coke doesn't win is an exemption on the sugar rationing.
• ▶ 1:43:09 Ben Gilbert What they do win is they get to supply Coca-Cola free of rations to the military.
• ▶ 1:43:44 David Rosenthal Yeah, they can still get full sugar Coca-Cola during the war.
• ▶ 1:43:48 David Rosenthal None of Coca-Cola's competitors, including Pepsi, get anything like this.
• ▶ 1:43:59 Ben Gilbert You have to say, like, Cola's due, and the response back from the government was basically like, sorry, Coca-Cola is about as American as it gets, and that's what we need right now, and that's what our, our boys are requesting.
• ▶ 1:44:15 David Rosenthal He's a Coke man.
• ▶ 1:44:16 David Rosenthal So the military under Eisenhower grants Coca-Cola employees quote unquote technical observer status, meaning that they can participate in the supply and infrastructure build out of the military around the world.
• ▶ 1:44:43 David Rosenthal Coca-Cola is right there with them setting up bottling plants and production lines to supply the troops.