Salon.com > Coca-Cola

“Original Coca-Cola had a very small amount of cocaine”

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:27:00 +0000

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergast is the definitive history of the product so many see as a symbol of America itself. This impressive tome – recently released as a third edition with added new material – is not a critique of Coca-Cola, nor is it a fan’s tribute, as Pendergast reveals things the Coca-Cola Company doesn’t want you to know. (Yes, it used to contain cocaine.) He even reveals the drink’s original secret formula (which is less exciting than you might think).
Coca-Cola is not fascinating for what it is – colored sugar water with bubbles – but for what it represents. And that’s a point long known by the company’s marketers, with the exception of when they forgot it during the New Coke fiasco in the 1980s. Today, marketing students in business schools everywhere study that famous gaff.

Coke’s Super Bowl ad: Pretty much everything wrong with America

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:01:00 +0000

Well, I’m dying to know which ending of the Coke Chase/Mirage Super Bowl ad you’re going to vote for! Really though, it’s impressive the way it simultaneously works the racial and gender angles while also exploiting the latest broadcast strategy of audience engagement.

Of course, the central device is how the ad plays off the desert … and the “great race” (both the movie and American exceptionalism).

With the West in an endless struggle in the Middle East not just for resources but mindshare, we see the Coke bottle — the symbol of globalization and American commercialism — sitting there in the hot sand, the object of desire for, first of all, this hapless Gulf prince/camel jockey.

My lifelong diet

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:40:00 +0000

Once, when I was nine years old, my older sister—then 15—invited me to her room. This in itself was an honor and a privilege, but today there was something even better: Kira was about to embark on a disciplined but rewarding diet of fat-free foods, and she wanted to know if I would join her. We would be partners! We would support each other, encourage each other, lose weight together! There would be challenges, of course, but together, we would succeed.

The first step, Kira explained, was to eliminate existing temptations, such as the great stock of Halloween candy currently occupying a corner of my bedroom closet. It wouldn’t do to try to ignore it, or to save a small selection for later, or even to enjoy one final fun-size Milky Way. The candy must go.

I complied without hesitation. I did not pause to consider the fact that this was by far the largest supply of treats I had ever amassed. I did not linger on the memory of shuffling through the streets of suburban Portland for hours, dressed as a housewife in slippers and robe, in the rain. I did not immediately recall growing steadily colder and more miserable as I followed my brother Gabe from door to door in his relentless and dogged pursuit of a full pillowcase, or the descent into hypothermia, or lying in bed later that night, shivering uncontrollably while my mother buried me under a heap of blankets.

Why Coke’s new can infuriated the Internet

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:24:00 +0000

The misleading package has long been a go-to marketing move for off-brands. Who among us has not inadvertently picked up a bottle of John Adams beer in her time, or a big box of Special J cereal? Usually, it's a clever – and quite deliberate -- exploitation of our expectations. Corporations know that it's the design that sells, that our eyes beeline for the familiar. But what happens when the original messes with our heads? Customers know that a green circle means Starbucks coffee, the golden arches mean McDonald's. A red can is a Coke. Well, not so fast...

Just in time for the holidays, the cola titan recently rolled out a festive new can design -- an homage to its seasonally iconic polar bear cans, and a reminder of Coke's relationship with the World Wildlife Fund. As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, "the company has frequently rung in the holiday with special can designs" in the past. But this time was different. This time all hell broke loose. So let's just get a few things straight so we never have to go through anything like this again: You don't win friends with salad. Stop trying to make "fetch" happen. And regular Coke does not belong in a white can. How are we supposed to distinguish regular and diet?