5. Interesting Story of Coca Cola

One day, my roommie asked why people did not feel so weird about drinking black colour beverage. Well, I never tought of it. Everyone drinks black Coke, so I naturally thought Coke should be black. Suddenly, I felt like there were something unique in coke industry. You may know about kind of history and strategy of coke better than I know, but there were lots of new interesting facts about coke to me. I would like to talk about it.

I could find some common facts between Coca Cola and Pepsi.

Coca Cola and Pepsi, they were made such a long time ago at first-Coca Cola(1886), Pepsi(1898), and they were made by pharmacists. they were supposed to be products for medicine, but became soft drink. That is so surprising because as you know, coke is infamous as unhealthy soft drink. Nevertheless, I read that people used Coke as medicine for a cold in Hongkong.


What image can you think of when you hear 'Coca Cola'? You might imagine well-known bottle and red colour, the white bear and so on. Yes, the bottle is a strong simbol of Coca Cola. They have used the bottle from 1910, and got a patent for this bottle in 1960. This bottle became a simbol and trademark of Coca Cola and nobody could not copy it. Second, the red colour can be a simbol of Coca Cola. They expected to give warm and friendly image to customers through this colour. According to this, do you know the present image of Santa Claus was made by this company? Well, I did not know. Actually, Santa Claus was a little elf in fantasy. However, Coca Cola made him as a big fat friendly old man who has a bushy-bearded face, and is wearing red clothes for Christmas because they wanted to sell their product in winter!
Coca Cola became a simbol of America, and as the brand introduced toward other countries, image of Santa Claus was also spreaded together. It is stood as a world wide culture now. There is no big changes in substances or design of Coca Cola, but this unchanged traits makes this brand value as No.1. However, it does not mean there is any weakness. Although they made the most famous soft drink in the world, they did not expend their brand to other related business. They just made a little bit different, but similar product like Sprite, Diet Cola. Although they are succeed in keeping this brand more than 100 years, there is no brand surviving forever. Actually, Coke has been threatend by rivals like Pepsi and new other soft drinks, and as the customers in developed countries is getting sensitive about unhealthy food, Coke seems to lose their market seriously. In case of Pepsi, they diverse to restaurant business like Pizza Hut and KFC. Another weakness is that their strategies are standardized all over the world. Their most budget is focused on Coca Cola and only head office makes its advertisement and spread the same ad to the other countries with slight changes with fonts. That advertisement made in America is not enough to expect the effectiveness and to drag agreement in different countries.

We can learn the genious ideas and how to keep brand for a long time through Coca Cola case, and it is also very suggestive that No.1 brand should always be aware of changes in customer needs and market flow, and not fond of present success. /posted by 20500580