Coca-Cola is famous for selling a feeling rather than a flavor, and its campaign history shows how deliberately it built that reputation. For most of the 20th century it did not argue with rivals about taste or price. It attached itself to moments: Christmas, friendship, sport and, eventually, the names of its own customers.
That pattern starts in 1931, when illustrator Haddon Sundblom began painting a warm, human Santa Claus for Coke’s holiday ads, work he continued for 33 years. In 1971, the “Hilltop” commercial put a multicultural group of young people on a hill outside Rome singing about buying the world a Coke. In 1979, “Hey Kid, Catch!” told a 60-second story about a football star and a young fan, and the animated polar bears of 1993 gave the brand a wordless mascot for a global audience.
The exception is also the most famous. In 1985, rattled by the Pepsi Challenge, Coca-Cola replaced its formula with a sweeter one, and New Coke lasted 79 days before the original returned. The lesson the company took from it, that people were attached to Coke as a part of their lives and not just as a taste, runs straight through to Share a Coke, which in 2011 replaced the logo on bottles with people’s first names.
Read in order, the campaigns show a brand that is strongest when it sells belonging, and weakest when it lets a rival set the terms.