Early Coca-Cola advertising

Coca-cola invested heavily in advertising and promotion since its beginning. The great strengths, apart from allying the brand very early on with religion and patriotism, was a strong commitment to advertising in a society restless to progress and try new products.

Pemberton marketed his concoction as a patent medicine, a supposed cure-all for a variety of ailments.

Asa Candler own early ads he proclaimed that he was a great sufferer of headaches. He claimed to be a great benefactor by offering to the world the cure that relived his suffering.

However, the product only really took off when the company stopped marketing Coke as a drug and rebranded the sweet formula as a tasty beverage.

In 1895, Coca-Cola launched a new advertising campaign encouraging consumers to ‘Drink Coca-Cola, Delicious and Refreshing.’

Six hundred thousand miles of highways were built in the 1920s. and the first of the ‘Ritz boy’ billboards appeared in 1925: a smiling bellhop holding a tray with a bottle of the soft drink and a glass on it.

The bottle in the Ritz boy ad was telling: Coca-Cola had been built on soda fountain sales.

In the 1970s, a song from Coca-Cola commercial called ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ became a popular hit single, but there is no evidence that it did anything to increase sales of the soft drink.

The Coca-Cola Company has historically targeted children and youth in its advertising and promotional activities.

Coca-Cola is one of the brands that are frequently used as examples of longtime successful global advertising.
Early Coca-Cola advertising