Marketing: Coke’s New Image

For months, the gossip fizzed through the ad world: “Coca-Cola is changing. Coke will have a completely new look.” It was no idle rumor. Lippincott & Margulies, the Manhattan design consultants, were hard at work on a multimillion-dollar project intended to refurbish Coca-Cola’s image. Says Walter Margulies: “The whole thing has been more secret than the work we did with Admiral Rickover on the Nautilus.” Now it is finished, and the company has told the world to prepare for “the most massive change in the graphics of a product that has ever been done.”

Next week, at their quadrennial convention in Atlanta, nearly 1,000 Coke bottlers will get the first look at the new look in a sound-and-light show that is billed as the most impressive indoor event in that city since the 1939 premiere of Gone With the Wind. To the casual outsider, however, the expensive extravaganza may have all the impact of a flourish of trumpets and a roll of drums—followed by two Coke bottles clinking weakly together.

What has actually changed? There will be a new logotype on Coke cans, boxes, signs, trucks, cups, glasses and uniforms—everything but the bottles. But the logo will still spell Coca-Cola in the familiar flowing, baroque script. The new twisting white ribbon under the words is supposed to “echo” the wasp-waisted shape of the bottle. Coke signs and emblems, however, will now be square or at least rectangular; the old circles, diamonds and fish shapes will be banished from the company’s advertising. Drivers of the 25,000 Coca-Cola trucks, a fleet that Coke officials claim is second in size only to that run by the U.S. Post Office, will be decked out in charcoal and beige uniforms that suggest a football referee improbably wearing a baseball batting helmet. They will carry bright red Coke order books.

Then there is a new slogan: “It’s the Real Thing”—a none-too-subtle implication that Pepsi, Royal Crown and other competitors are imitators. The slogan will be sung on radio spots by Soul Hero James Brown and the Fifth Dimension, among others. Coke’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, has put together some highly imaginative TV commercials featuring still photos of “real life” in the U.S.—Coney Island, farms and hippies.

Thin on Diet. Nobody knows what the campaign will eventually cost. Much of the money will be paid by the bottler-distributors—provided that Coke can persuade them to come across. Franchise contracts are now so liberal that bottlers can do things that dismay headquarters—for example, placing some Coke signs on outhouse walls. At next week’s convention, Coca-Cola will introduce a “modern” contract designed to give the company tighter control.

Though the old slogan is being muted, things have been going better with Coke. Profits and sales have risen steadily to $110 million earned on $1.2 billion in revenues last year. True, the company could have been more nimble in shifting to meet new buying trends: its products account for an estimated 41% of the U.S. soft-drink market, but the company’s Tab ranks only third in the market for diet colas. On the other hand, Coke has diversified quite successfully in recent years, notably with its big-selling Fresca. Now the company hopes to put still more life into sales through the image and logo changeover, which is expected to be well on its way by the peak of next summer’s soft-drinking season.