Coca Cola Ads

The Hollywood/Coca-Cola Connection

My favorite Coca-Cola connection to the movies is “One, Two Three”, the brilliant Billy Wilder movie where James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive in Berlin.  Bet there wasn’t much mention of that in the museum.  I’d like to know how Wilder got permission to use the Coca-Cola name.

Coca-Cola Advertising Through the Years

Coca-Cola is one of the most persistent and well-loved brands in history. It is one of the longest surviving brands, and thus considered among the most successful companies ever. The reason in part of this, is their strong advertising and marketing. Coca-Cola has always relied in advertising to promote and market their brand, and this is why they are always on top of their game, after having been in the market for more than a century!  Coca-Cola advertising has indeed greatly affected American pop culture, and even the whole world.

Here is a collection of the best Coca-Cola Advertising from its early days in the 1880′s up until now. Enjoy!

There is little creativity found in the first ad, just some text. No artsy fonts, no images, no gimmicks. The first newspaper ad showed the company’s first (and definitely the last) tagline: ‘Delicious! Refreshing! Exhilarating! Invigorating!’

Soon afterwards, John Pemberton ran a longer and more persuasive newspaper ad. It still promoted the drink as a ‘delicious, exhilarating, refreshing and invigorating’ drink, but added more promises that the drink is an ‘intellectual beverage’, ‘temperance drink’, ‘brain tonic’, and it even claims to be able to cure ‘headache, neuralgia, hysteria, melancholy’ and more.

Until the 1970′s most people enjoyed cola in ice cream parlors or the local soda fountain. The soda fountain counter was a place for socializing with other people. However, at this point in time the fountain was already declining in popularity as bottled drinks and commercialized fast food quickly rose to popularity. As you can see previously, until the 1960′s Coca-Cola advertising shows people holding their drink in a glass rather than the iconic bottle.

In 1969, They released their new advertising slogan ‘It’s the real thing.’ The campaign now centers on the Coca-Cola bottle itself.

It was during this era that Coca-Cola went global. The company has now spread to 163 countries worldwide. Year after year, it has captured new markets such as Macau, Turkey, Paraguay, the Philippines, to name a few. Not only this, Coca-Cola has expanded into many different flavors such as Fanta and Sprite.

With the swift expansion, Coca-Cola went with a massive advertising campaign. Coca-Cola always believed in advertising. The international appeal of Coke was shared in their advertising with the slogan: ‘I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke’.

The Story of Coca-Cola

For God, country and Coca-Cola, the definitive history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it

Coca-Cola girls, an advertising art history

The Coke Machine, The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink

The Story of Coca-Cola