Steve plays the Coca-Cola Can Joe!

A unique musical instrument arrived in the mail for the Archives a few years back. While I would often pluck away at it, I always thought it would be interesting to see what it’d sound like in the hands of a true musician. Meet Steve Soltis, who also works with us at Coca-Cola. Steve has played the banjo for a number of years, and he agreed to have a go at the Can Joe for us. The original inventor of the Can Joe (also referred to as the canjo) was Herschel Brown of Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Herschel Brown had the idea that sending Can Joes to troops serving in the military would allow him to put music and happiness into the hands of people all around the world. He titled his business “Can Joes For World Peace”, and said his instruments were for everybody – whether you could hold a tune or not. Even though the Can Joe was designed for those who could not play a lick, Steve proves that it doesn’t hurt to have the skills (it sure doesn’t sound like that when I play). Many thanks to Herschel Brown for sending the Can Joe to us.

 

Kathlene Martyn - Star of the Ziegfeld Follies And Coca-Cola

I was doing some research in The Friendly Hand, one of our earliest sales publications and predecessor to the Red Barrel, this week and came across a great article.  The headline on the story is "The Prettiest Girl in All New York and One We've All Seen Before."  As I read the story, it notes that Kathlene Martyn had appeared in both the Nine O'Clock and Midnight Frolic and her photo was in many of the magazines of the day.  The story then noted that she had appeared in the window cutout of two girls on the beach pointing up at an airplane.  The story quoted Jos. S. Potsdamer, director in charge of sales of the Ketterlinus Lithographic Manufacturing Company, which made the cutout, said "he had to pose her for both girls because it was impossible to find another to match her." 

We have the cutout and had it on display at the World of Coca-Cola for many years.  However, we do not have the airplane.  We know what it looks like as it was shown in the 1922 advertising price guide, so, take a look in your attic or garage and if you find the plane shown in the photo, let me know!

Opening the "Vault of the Secret Formula"

On more occasions than I can count, people have told me that I have the best job at The Coca-Cola Company. For almost three and a half decades, I have served as the corporate archivist, charged with the responsibility of preserving the history of an American icon. In our collection, we have thousands of pieces of advertising, merchandising and packaging that document the growth of Coca-Cola from a regional soda fountain drink to a global beverage company. In addition to their historical value, many of these items have become high end collectibles commanding premium prices from fans of the brand.

Every day I have an opportunity to touch this incredibly rich collection and to create opportunities to share chapters of the Coca-Cola story with others through interviews, websites and exhibitions. I am trained as a professional archivist, but at The Coca-Cola Company, I am really a storyteller. Whether it is a discussion of the role of the soda fountain in nineteenth century America, the delivery of Coca-Cola to the troops during World War II, or the creation of the modern image of Santa Claus by illustrator Haddon Sundblom, it is really the stories about the brand that make Coca-Cola special and my job unique.

Today was one of those very special days in the history of Coca-Cola, a day that will generate many new stories about the most intriguing aspect of Coca-Cola: its Secret Formula. Today, the Company announced that the most closely guarded secret in the history of American commerce had been moved from a bank vault in Atlanta to the World of Coca-Cola. For the first time in over 85 years, the formula will have a new home. Please take a look at the video below that we used at todays event.

Normally, I only have the opportunity to tell stories after an event has been concluded. This time I had a chance to tell stories in conjunction with a very special event as it was happening. Today was a reminder that I do have the best job at The Coca-Cola Company.

National Bad Poetry Day

August 18th is National Bad Poetry day, and I have to celebrate by showing a series of interesting ads.  Created in 1971, these ads ran in Editor & Publisher and other trade magazines.  While the purpose of the ads was to reinforce the rules about printing our trademark, the first ad challenged the trade press to write a better limerick about the rules of use of our trademark than this one purportedly created by our legal team.

The rules that we write are three:

We abhor the diminutive "c"

and "s" preceeded by "e" or "a"

is no better than apostrophe.

The winner of the limerick would win a trip to Atlanta to have dinner with our legal staff. 

As one would imagine, the replies were swift and furious.  Many pointed out that the initial rhyme was not even a limerick and that the ad had misspelled the word "preceeded."  After a few mea culpas, a follow up ad declared that Carol Wait of The Seymour Daily Tribune won the contest.

We don't have any prizes now, but you are welcome to submit your own limericks about the trademark.  We will even post the good ones.

National Talk In An Elevator Day

I was going to write a serious post about our acquisition of the Schweppes brand in over 100 countries around the world which occurred 11 years ago today, but then I realized it was National Talk In An Elevator Day and that had to trump Schweppes.  I did have a tough time finding an image to illustrate the post, but finally found this print ad from 1937.  They all look happy, but I am not sure if they have been talking.

Mark this one on your calendar for next year, then, on last Friday in July, make sure to tell everyone you meet in an elevator, "Hello."

Boy Scouts of America

While the Boy Scouts of America were founded in 1910 and are celebrating a century of "Being Prepared" this year, they were not officially incorporated until President Woodrow Wilson signed their incorporation papers on this date in 1916. 

The Coca-Cola Company and the Boy Scouts have been partners for decades and we have quite a bit of Scout material in our Archives including artwork, Jamboree material and numerous ads from Boys Life magazine.  Many of our local bottlers were also partners for their local Boy Scout Troops.  We recently acquired several calendars featuring Boy Scout artwork by artist Norman Rockwell which advertised for bottlers across the country.  The image to the right is from the 1946 calendar produced for the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Enid, Oklahoma.  If you look closely, one can note the first Scout Law printed at the bottom of the page.  Each month had additional Scouting information printed.  A calendar like this in good condition with all the pages are generally worth $ 400 to $ 500.

We have too many images to post to the blog, so I have created a facebook photo album with more photos of the Scout calendars. 

Carver's Country Kitchen and Coca-Cola

Returning to our ongoing theme of Coca-Cola and food we have a real treat for you this week.  Carver's Country Kitchen is an incredible restaurant that is housed in a grocery store around the corner from Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta.  While the building has stood for decades, Sharon and Robert Carver opened their restaurant in 1992 and have been serving fantastic Southern food ever since. 

We asked the Carvers if they would let us make a few videos and blog about their menu and the decor and they were thrilled - but we had to be there when they cooked the food at 6:00 AM.  Our dutiful staff set their alarms a little earlier than usual and arrived at the grocery to film.  The first thing you noticed was the amazing smell of the Coca-Cola ham which you could smell as you approached the store.  The second was how gracious and welcoming the Carvers were during the whole process.  Sharon had some wonderful insights about her cooking and Robert regaled us with stories as he peeled the potatoes for that day's serving of mashed potatoes (no powdered stuff served here!).

I hope you enjoy the video as much as we did filming it and keep reading to catch the next one where Sharon shares her Coca-Cola Cake recipe.  If you are ever in Atlanta during the week, make sure to stop by and try some ham and cake. 

Star Wars Coca-Cola Collectible Glasses

"May the force be with you."

Today is Star Wars day on my calendar.  In a play on words from the famous phrase in the movie, May 4th becomes "May the fourth" be with you!  In honor of this auspicious event, I wanted to highlight the original four Coca-Cola Star Wars glasses that were so popular when they were introduced in 1978.

The glasses were used as a cooperative promotion with Coca-Cola and Burger King.  The glasses were given away with the purchase of a drink, one glass per week over a period of four weeks.  The glasses featured artwork on one side and then a description of the characters on the opposite side.  Burger King and Coca-Cola logos were also on the glasses.  It is interesting to note that the description on the glass with Han Solo and Chewbacca features the Wookie more prominently than the swashbuckling hero.

 

As collectibles are concerned, you will not be able to put you kid through college selling the set of four glasses, but they are still a great item that brings back memories of the movies.

25th Anniversary Of New Coke

The leadership of The Coca-Cola Company gathered at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York's Lincoln Center at11:00 am on April 23rd, 1985 for an important announcement.  In the words of Chairman Roberto Goizueta, "The best has been made even better."  The 99 year old secret formula for Coca-Cola was being replaced by New Coke.

Most of the readers of the blog know the rest of the story: the protest, the countless calls the 800-GET-COKE number, the lawsuits and the eventual admission of a mistake by The Coca-Cola Company 79 days later when Coca-Cola was returned to the market as "Classic" Coke. 

For the first time in the 25 years that have passed since that momentous meeting we are unveiling some new documents for display at The World of Coca-Cola.  These items will be added to the New Coke case in the Pop Culture Gallery and include Roberto Goizueta's hand annotated speech from the Lincoln Center event where he crossed out several remarks about the secrecy of the launch.  We also included one of the binders form the lawsuit from the Old Cola Drinkers of America and the briefing document for Project Kansas (New Coke internal codename.)  I hope that if you are in Atlanta, you will be able to visit the World of Coke to see the new display.

The key learning for The Coca-Cola Company was that we proved the brand does not belong to us... it belongs to our consumers, when we took it away, we sparked a call to action.  We heard the message then and still live by it now.

I would like to share a video of a speech made by the then President of the Coca-Cola Company, Donald R. Keough.  These remarks, made at the press conference for the return of Coke Classic, were called the greatest performance by an American businessmen by a key marketer at the time.  I think they do a great job in summarizing what we learned about our brand.

Coca-Cola Conversations 2nd Birthday and Coke By The Numbers

The monitors in the loft portion of the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta display a feature we call "Coke by the Numbers," which have a dizzying array of numerical facts about our Company.  For example, did you know that in the first year of operation, we only averaged sales of nine drinks per day?

We were recently discussing some of the numbers associated with our blog and other social media outlets and we were amazed at the outreach.  Part of this was spurred on by the fact that this blog just celebrated its second birthday on Saturday, January, 23rd.  In those two years, we have written over 450 posts and fielded over 3,700 comments.  While we are still not able to answer questions about the value of individual collectibles, we have created a section of the blog which gives you broad guidelines on values.

In addition to the blog, we have started our own YouTube Channel where we have posted 45 videos which have been viewed nearly 500,000 times.  We are really excited about the addition of videos to the YouTube Channel and embedding them on the blog and are proud of some of the content like the Cooking with Coke series featuring James Beard nominated Chef Linton Hopkins and the oral history interview with Mean Joe Greene.

We have also launched a facebook page where you can join the more that 600 fans of the Coke Archives and you can also follow us now on Twitter where we are approaching 500 followers.  While you will generally see all of our blog post on these two sites, we try to offer some different or expanded stories and photos via facebook and Twitter.

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented on the site these last two years and I hope that we will continue to provide a blog that entertains and educates.