The Evolution of Coca-Cola's Advertising

The inventor of Coca-Cola was John Pemberton and he created Coke in 1886. The Coca-Cola company, however, was not founded until 1892 and has been an iconic brand that is recognized almost anywhere in the world ever since. Over the years, like with any other company, their way of advertising has changed drastically. I decided to review a few of their print advertisements over the years.

1900s.

Let’s start where it all began. The advertisement below is one of Coca-Cola’s first ever print ads and it is from the very early 1900s. We can see from this ad that Coke was known to help with headaches and relieve mental and physical exhaustion. Very different from the Coke we know today that is criticized for being unhealthy and having too much sugar.

1930s

In the 1930s, Coke decided to start using Santa Claus in their advertisements around Christmas time. These are the ads that are seen above.

1940s

Coca-Cola released the ads below and other similar ones in 1944 when World War II was occurring. Many of the ads were about soldiers having something to take their minds off of what was going on and just sit back, enjoy a cold Coke, and relax.

1950s

The ads above were published in 1955 and were the first Coca-Cola ads to have a woman of color in them. In the ad on the left we can see Mary Alexander, the woman in the ad, admiring herself in the old advertisement.

Coke also began advertising on television in the fifties. Below is the link to one of their first television ads and it is vastly different to what we are used to today, they even had their own song.

 Coca-Cola 1950 TV ad.

1970s

In the seventies, the main social issue was for there to be peace and Coke jumped on the wagon and created ads around this movement. They even made their own song that inspired bringing the world together. The song is linked below.

I would like to buy the world a coke.

1980s

In the 1980s, Coca-Cola decided to try some new recipes. They came out with Diet Coke in 1982 and Cherry Coke in 1985, which are both still hugely successful today. The also released New Coke in 1985 which was a formula change to the original Coke, but this was not successful at all and received a lot of backlash and for this reason they discontinued it and went back to their old recipe.

2000s

With the huge change in the way consumers receive advertising in the last two decades, Coke has changed the format of their print advertising very much. They focused more on television, digital, and eventually social media advertising. In 2013, Coke launched the “Share a Coke” campaign where they printed thousands of names onto the bottles. This encouraged consumers to look for their names and even post pictures of the Coke when they found one with their name on it.  This campaign was extremely successful and went on until 2018.  Coke has been a great example of a company that tries to engage with their customers and make a connection with them. This in turn makes these costumers very loyal to the brand.

All in all, Coke’s advertisements over the years have all been very decent. Their name, logo, and even color is recognized globally and loved by many. I look forward to seeing the next few decades of Coca-Cola’s advertising and how much they change.

P.s – if you’re interested in some other Coke ads, check out my last blog post “Using Emotion in Advertising.”

Thanks for reading!