For this blog post I decided to follow Coca Cola's advertising throughout the years. I chose this company because it has been around for a while and I wanted to further look at how they have changed during the years.
This was the first ever Coca Cola ad published in the Atlanta Journal on May 8, 1886. Those fist couple of ads weren't really that creative and had a lot of writing.
The ads were persuasive though claiming that it could cure headaches, hysteria, neuralgia and melancholy. It was promoted as an "Intellectual Beverage" and Temperance Drink containing a valuable Tonic and Nerve Stimulants.
During the early 1900's Coca Coa changed up their look and decided to use young woment to advertise the drink.
During the 1930's to 1960's Coca Cola created the image of a big jolly happy Santa to endorse the drink. It's Coca Cola who is responsible for creating the image of Santa we see today.
They kept that image of Santa for 3 decades until the late 1960's. Up until then Coke was only served in ice cream parlors and soda fountains. Fountain drinks weren't as successful at that time though because of the rise of bottled drinks and overall the rise of the fast food chain.
This is the fist time that coke was shown in a bottle, that they are well known for now. one thing I found ironic about the ad above is that the slogan was "It's the real thing. Coke." and they had the bottle of coke next to a bunch of whole foods like apples and blueberries when coke is far from pure and whole.
During the 1960-1980 era is when Coca Cola when global. it had spread had over to 163 countries. It was also during this time that Coca Cola expanded into different flavors like Sprite and Fanta. Because of the worldwide success they changed their slogan to "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke". As you can see in the commercial above they had a bunch of different races singing about Coke.
It was in the 1980's that Diet Coke was created. Also they had introduce a new Coke recipe. Due to the number of complaints though they discontinued that recipe and when back to the original recipe.
In 1993 they introduced the polar bear advertisements.
Since 2000 the campaign now has been "The Coke Side of Life with it's main theme being people drinking coke and feeling happy.
One of Coca Cola's most successful campaigns was the Happiness Truck/Machine. They used used viral marketing and guerilla marking to advertise their product in a fun, happy way on YouTube.
Coca Cola has been around for over 100 years. It has changed it's advertising multiple times trying to say current. What hasn't changed though is the happiness factor that Coke is advertising. I don't think that has changed becuase no matter what everyone wants to be happy and drinking Coke could do that.