Filming In The Archives

If you are a fan of Coca-Cola on Facebook you may have noticed a few videos that featured the Archives the last few months.  The two founders of the Coca-Cola Facebook page, Dusty and Michael had toured the Archives when they visited Atlanta a year ago. They had even included photographs from their tour on the site and in their original video.  A few months ago, the Archives was contacted by a colleague in our Marketing Department to see if we would let Dusty and Micheal film some new videos in the Archives storage space.  I met them at the Archives at 9:00 AM and the team filmed all day.  It was alot of fun to see how the process works and I was amazed by the creativity of Dusty and Michael and the advertising crew.  I am no actor and a few of the scenes pushed me well outside my comfort zone, but all in all, it was great fun.  I posted Everything Must Go in August and I hope you enjoy the new video.

Giving Back

 

 

 

 

 

Coke Time With Eddie Fisher

You may have seen in the news recently that entertainer Eddie Fisher passed away on Wednesday at age 82.  Eddie Fisher was the star of the first television series sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company.  "Coke Time with Eddie Fisher," which began broadcast in 1953, was very popular, but, in the early 1950's fewer that 50% of the population had television sets.  To expand the audience, the show was transcribed for radio.  While the television show was sponsored by the Company, the local bottlers were responsible for the radio version.  Even though Fisher had completed his radio and television work for Coke by 1957, a special record promotion featuring six of his most famous songs sold over 500,000 copies.

Coke Icons On CNN

The CNN International program, Icon, recently did a feature on Coca-Cola advertising.  The program featured an interview with the Director of the Archives, Phil Mooney, along with David Butler and Wendy Clark from our Marketing organization.  The program did a great job showing how some of our icons and advertising were developed over time.  The interview with Phil took place in the Milestones gallery at the World of Coca-Cola and we worked with the CNN producers to provide much of the footage.

The Universal Product Code

I attended portions of a two day meeting on mobile marketing hosted by our Coca-Cola North America colleagues.  One of the trending topics is the use of smartphones to scan bar-codes and provide additional information directly to the users phone. They also discussed innovations like the decorative bar-code from Singapore to the left. While this was all neat stuff and really excited the marketers, the historian in me wondered about the origin and history of the Universal Product Code.

The UPC or bar-code was first used on June 26, 1974 in the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio.  The concept of a machine readable code had been experimented with for several years and we have documentation in our files as early as 1972 when a joint committee was formed with Coca-Cola bottlers and Coca-Cola USA to study the impact of the UPC.  It is also interesting to note how much resistance there was to the bar-code.  Several of our publications give details to the consumer reaction to the code including the fear that computerized shopping would be more expensive! 

However, in 1976 Refresher magazine noted that over 80% of our products and packaging were identified with the now ubiquitous bar-code.  It is interesting that the article on the bottom half of that same page notes that with the changes in packaging technology that the end was near for can openers.  I found and scanned the photo of the can opener because I had almost forgotten what they looked like.  I think the magazine predicted that one right. 

THE TOUR Championship Golf Display

If anyone is going to THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola at East Lake Golf Club this week, make sure to check our the golf heritage display I installed in front of the Clubhouse.  The winner of the tournament will receive this beautiful Vendo 39 vending machine, oh, they also win $ 1.35 million dollars, but I know which I would rather have.

International Coastal Cleanup

We have blogged before about our long heritage and some of the efforts of The Coca-Cola Company to partner with organizations to help the environment.  In this post from last year, we highlighted our 40th anniversary of the Keep America Beautiful and Bend A Little campaigns. 

More recently, The Coca-Cola Company celebrated our 15th anniversary partnering with Ocean Conservancy on the International Coastal Cleanup.  Please take a minute to watch the video below to find out what you can do in your local area.

 

 

 

Coke Collectors in Malaysia - Expedition 206

Beginning in January this year, The Coca-Cola Company launched Expedition 206 where Tono, Kelly and Tony, three young "happiness ambassadors" will travel to all 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold.  To date, they are 260 days and 152 countries into their journey.  When they visited Malaysia, the team met with some Coca-Cola collectors who were excited to share their love for Coke collecting and their extensive bottle collections.  You can read Kelly's recap of their visit here where she comments on how the love of Coke and collecting brought a little happiness to the group. 

 

Coca-Cola Cake

We have not posted a recipe or food post in a while, so I wanted to share a Coca-Cola cake recipe someone e-mailed me.  I love the name of the blog "Cupcakes Ate My Soul" and while we have done cupcake recipes in the past (including this video from the West Egg,) I think that Elli's English phrasing makes it sound even better.  US readers will have to pull out their conversion charts for this one, but I can't wait to try it.

Photo courtesy of Cupcakes Ate My Soul.

You Can Share Your Coca-Cola Photos On flickr

The Coca-Cola Company recently launched a sponsored group on the photo-sharing site, flickr.  I have used flickr for years and love it, but if you are new to the site, they boast over 52 million members with over 3.2 million photos added each day.  We will periodically use the site to upload images from the Archives or from our collections.

Check out the site today and start sharing photos of your collection.  I just added this photo of me with the bear as well as the Baird clock in the milestones gallery.  It was pretty easy to do.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/thecoca-colaco/

Vintage Vending Machine At East Lake Golf Club

I visited East Lake Golf Club today to make plans to set up an exhibit of historic Coca-Cola golf material for at the club for The Tour Championship presented by Coca-Cola which will be held in two weeks.  At one point in my career prior to joining The Coca-Cola Company, I was the Bobby Jones Curator at the Atlanta History Center. East Lake is the course where Jones learned to play and has always been one of my favorite golf clubs because it has such a rich golf heritage.  If you are able to attend the tournament, make sure to visit the pro shop where they have a vintage vending machine.  Pretty nice looking machine and the Bobby Jones Coca-Cola cutout to the right of it is a nice touch.