I have chosen to write about the famous brand Coca Cola, because I find it hard to find anything else more American and international, than that specific company is. It was almost the first thing I thought of when we were told to find an American company to write about, which could indicate that most of the kids, young adults and adults today know about it. I am actually pretty sure that almost all people today know what Coca Cola is, poor or not.
History:
¬Creator: The story about the creator of Coca Cola, John Stith Pemberton, is quite good I think. John Stith Pemberton was a pharmacist, and served as a lieutenant in the American Confederate army (which were an opponent to Union during the American civil war), but was hurt in the Battle of Columbus in 1886, because one of the Union’s soldiers slashed him across the chest with a sabre. Even though Pemberton survived the wound, he became addicted to the morphine that was used to ease his pain. When Pemberton realized, he had become addicted to morphine, he started to search for a cure, and created the Opium-free painkiller named”Dr. Tuggle's Compound Syrup of Globe Flower”. After that, he made a drink named “Pemberton's French Wine Coca” containing Kola nut, damiana, cocaine (until 1903) and Alcohol (until 1886). A man named Frank Mason Rob-inson proposed that they should call the drink Coca Cola, and Pemberton approved the proposal. However, just as soon as the Coca Cola had hit the market, Pemberton was bankrupt, sick and still had an addiction to morphine. Pemberton thought that the Coca Cola one day would become a national drink, and so he tried to retain a share of the ownership to his son, Charles Pemberton. However, Charles only wanted the money, so Pemberton instead decided to sell the remaining patent to Asa Candler in 1888 (whom later established the whole Coca Cola Company) and it actu-ally only costed Asa Candler 550 dollars to buy the patent. The exact same year Pemberton died of stomach cancer and a lifetime of being a morphine addict, and only six years later his son died an opium addict himself.
The company: After John S. Pemberton had died in 1888 , Asa Candler continued to establish the Coca Cola Company, but to make the Coca Cola famous Asa Candler knew that he had to start promoting his company’s products. That was when Asa Candler had a brilliant idea for how he wanted to promote the Coca Cola brand and make it national; Asa started to send out salespersons whom were hired to give people free Coca Cola coupons so that people would try it out later on, and hopefully keep buying it. His promoting technique also included him plastering the Coca Cola logo on calendars, bookmarks, walls and notebooks all over America. In 1899 Asa Candler drew up a contract, which allowed two men, named Ben Thomas and Joseph Whitehead, to start bottling the Coca Cola up, so that it could be sold in other places than just Jacob’s pharmacy, which nor-mally sold it. Even though Asa Candler did not believe that, the two men would be successful, the bottled Coca Cola hit the market in the early 1900’s, and were available at grocers and saloons. Regarding Coca Cola many people call the period from the 1920’s to the 1940’s The golden age of advertising because that Coca Cola, within this period, made a lot of advertisements and most of them actually became very famous, like the Santa Claus advertisement, where Santa is sitting down drinking a Cola, looking very kind. They also created a slogan saying “The pause that re-freshes” with an eye to making working people buy it when they had lunch breaks. In the 1950’s when the Pepsi started to become popular among the common people in America, you might say Coca Cola became a little frightened because their costumers stopped buying the huge amounts of Cola they used to, and started to buy a lot of Pepsi instead. Coca Cola then decid-ed to do what they were best at, creating something new, and that was when they made new bot-tles introducing the king sized bottle and the family sized bottle so, that it was a lot easier for the women to carry it in their bags when they went grocery shopping. In the 1960’s Coca Cola came up with a new drink named TaB. Coca Cola made the TaB drink, be-cause the American women had started to care about how many calories the things they ate and drank contained, and Coca Cola was obviously not the most sugar free thing on the market back then. The TaB drink did okay and in 1964, about 10 percent of the people who cared about calories drank it instead of Coca Cola. In the 1980’s Coca Cola began to develop a new kind of Cola called the new Coke because the in-creasing competition with Pepsi. Coca Cola wanted the new Coke to replace “The Classic Coke”. When Coca Cola on April 23, 1985, released The New Coke, it was not the success that they had hoped for. People hated, the new “wannabe” Classic Coke, so much that they made groups against it, wrote complaints and called the Coca Cola 8000 times a day, to tell them they did not think that it was okay to replace the traditional Classic Coke with something like this. On July 10, Coca Cola took The New Coke off the market, and let The Classic Coke return to the shelves. Today Coca Cola has a yearly turnover on around 12 billion dollars, and a net worth of 179.9 bil-lion dollars. They have managed to become a very international company, and their products are sold almost everywhere, for instance supermarkets, diners, gas stations and restaurants.
Products:
Coca Cola are the creators of around 3600 products, too many to name, so I therefore decided to tell you about, the eight most famous products of theirs:
8. Innocent: The Innocent drink is one of the most famous Coca Cola products we have In Europe. The Innocent drink, were not invented by Coca Cola, but by three men named Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright, whom in 2009 agreed to sell a stake of 10-20 percent to Coca Cola, which increased to 58 percent in 2010, and in 2013 Coca Cola increased their stake to 90 percent.
7. Minute Maid: The Minute Maid drink mostly consist of fruit juice and it is one of the most sold fruit juices in the world with its 2 billion dollar global sales (yearly). This drink is also one of the most sold Coca Cola products in Europe.
6. Powerade: The Powerade sports drink is one of Coca Cola’s most sold products all over America. Powerade has around 25 percent of the market in America, while its rival, Gatorade, holds around 75 percent, though Powerade is growing in popularity.
5. Coca Cola Zero: Coca Cola zero is the sugar free version of The Classic Coca Cola, and it was made as an, a little bit more masculine version of the former Diet Coke, which was made for women. Coca Cola Zero is sold in almost all countries.
4. Fanta: The history about Fanta is unique, I think. You see, during world war two in Germany Co-ca Cola had a hard time importing all the required ingredients for The Original Coca Cola, and they therefore decided to develop a drink, that only required the things Germany already had, and the drink they ended up creating, was very successful. Fanta is also sold in most countries.
3. Sprite: Coca Cola introduced sprite to the world in the 1960’s, because Pepsi just had released the 7’UP, and as expected the new “Sprite” totally outperformed the 7’UP. Today sprite is con-sumed by most countries.
2. Diet Coke: The Diet Coke (also called TaB) is among the oldest Coca Cola products, and it was made to make sure that even the Coca Cola consumers on diets, could drink Coca Cola. Today TaB is consumed by over 150 countries, and it has grown to be the second most popular soda bever-age.
1. Classic Coca Cola: Finally, last but not least the Coca Cola King, Classic Coca cola. The Classic Coca Cola is one of the most famous products and millions of people all over the world consume it every day, hell man, astronauts have even consumed Coca Cola in outer space, you know why, it is because we love it and because it is a traditional drink. The only countries that does not consume it is North Korea and Cuba.
Staff/personnel:
The current chief executive officer (CEO) and Chairman of the Coca Cola Empire is Muthar Kent. Muthar Kent is Turkish-American and was in 2008 appointed as CEO, and as chairman in 2013. Muthar Kent has worked for the Coca Cola Company most of his life, though, after having worked for Coca Cola for 20 years, Muthar Kent decided to leave his job as managing director of Coca Cola Amatil-Europe in 1999, because he was offered a position as CEO of Efes Beverage Group in Turkey. Muthar Kent re-joined the company again in 2005.
The current Executive Vice President and President of Coca Cola international is a Turkish man named Ahmet Bozer. Ahmet Bozer got a job at Coca Cola USA in 1990, as a Financial Control Manager, and has been in the company ever since. He was appointed as Executive Vice President and President of Coca Cola International in 2013, and has had the jobs ever since.
Charity:
In 1984, Coca Cola decided to make a charity fond named “The Coca-Cola Foundation”. The Coca-Foundation’s main goal was to improve the health in communities all over the world. The charity fund has four main priority areas:
1) Decent water: They made this a priority to make sure that all people would have access to clean water.
2) Healthy and Active Lifestyle: This was made a priority so that the charity fund would be able to motivate people into changing their lifestyle into a healthier one, where healthy food and a lot of exercise is an important thing.
3) Community recycling: This is a priority because the charity fond knows how important it is that we recycle the stuff we use.
4) Education: This is one of their priorities because they find it important that the young adults today gets properly educated, and to make sure that, that happens, they do stuff like facilitating the schooling facilities or encouraging the young adults into studying. In 2013, the company donated 143 million dollars to charity.
Sponsorships:
Coca Cola has sponsored a lot of different companies, events and professional sport leagues. One of their most famous sponsorships is the one they have with the Olympic Games. The sponsorship with the Olympic Games is also one of the longest ones they have had, because it has lasted for 89 years. Coca Cola are also sponsors of the National Basketball League (NBA), where NBA’s official soft drink is Coca Cola’s own Sprite.
Coca Cola Denmark:
Coca Cola came to Denmark 1. January 1936, but because of World War 2 the Coca Cola produc-tion stopped, and it did not come back until 1959, 14 years after World War 2 had ended. Today Coca Cola Denmark is fabricated and distributed by Carlsberg.