Monday, November 13, 2006
World of Coca-Cola
The World of Coca-Cola is a permanent exhibition featuring the history of Coca-Cola and its well-known advertising. It is located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, adjacent to Underground Atlanta and is run by The Coca-Cola Company, whose world headquarters is located on nearby North Avenue.
The attraction is toured from the top down; guests begin their visit on the top level. The museum is presented roughly in chronological order, with numerous examples of advertising materials and Coke-branded memorabilia. Some of the noteworthy attractions include a replica of a mid-20th century soda fountain (based on a real drugstore that was found in the city of Baxley, Georgia, in the southeastern corner of the state) and a more futuristic vision of one, where guests get a chance to try Coca-Cola products from around the world.
World of Coca-Cola Atlanta opened in August of 1990. In addition to the museum exhibit, the attraction includes a gift shop that carries a wide selection of Coca-Cola branded merchandise. The World of Coca-Cola Atlanta is scheduled to move to a new, larger facility on May 24, 2007. The attraction will be located adjacent to the new Georgia Aquarium on property owned by the Coca-Cola Company. The combined complex has been named Pemberton Place, in honor of John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola.
World of Coca-Cola Las Vegas was located on Las Vegas Boulevard South (more famously known as the Las Vegas Strip), adjacent to the MGM Grand Las Vegas hotel and casino. It was closed in 2000; however, the Everything Coca-Cola store remains open.
World of Coca-Cola Tokyo is located on the 6th floor of Mediage in Daiba.
External linksWednesday, November 08, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Criticisms of Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola Company has been criticized for the allegedly adverse health effects of its flagship product. However, a common criticism of Coke based on its allegedly toxic acidity levels has been found to be baseless by most researchers; lawsuits based on these criticisms have been dismissed by several American courts for this reason.
Most nutritionists advise that Coca-Cola and other soft drinks can be harmful if consumed excessively, particularly to young children whose soft drink consumption competes with, rather than complements, a balanced diet. Studies have shown that regular soft drink users have a lower intake of calcium (which can contribute to osteoporosis), magnesium, ascorbic acid, riboflavin, and vitamin A.[27] The drink has also aroused criticism for its use of caffeine, an addictive substance.[28]
Although numerous court cases have been filed against The Coca-Cola Company since the 1920s, alleging that the acidity of the drink is dangerous, no evidence corroborating this claim has been found. In some of these cases, evidence has been presented that claimed Coca-Cola is no more harmful than comparable soft drinks or acidic fruit juices like apple juice.[citation needed] Under normal conditions, scientific evidence indicates Coca-Cola's acidity causes no immediate harm.[29]
Like most other colas, Coca-Cola contains phosphoric acid. One study has shown that this hastens bone loss, contributing to illnesses such as osteoporosis.[30]
There is also some concern regarding the usage of high fructose corn syrup in the production of Coca-Cola. Since the late-1980s in the U.S., Coke has been made with high fructose corn syrup, instead of sugar glucose or fructose, to reduce costs. This has come under criticism because of concerns that the corn used to produce corn syrup may come from genetically altered plants.[31] Some nutritionists also caution against consumption of high fructose corn syrup because of possible links to obesity and diabetes.[32]
In India, there exists a major controversy concerning pesticides and other harmful chemicals in bottled products including Coca-Cola. In 2003, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a non-governmental organization in New Delhi, said aerated waters produced by soft drinks manufacturers in India, including multinational giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, contained toxins including lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos — pesticides that can contribute to cancer and a breakdown of the immune system. Tested products included Coke, Pepsi, and several other soft drinks, many produced by The Coca-Cola Company. CSE found that the Indian produced Pepsi's soft drink products had 36 times the level of pesticide residues permitted under European Union regulations; Coca-Cola's soft drink was found to have 30 times the permitted amount. CSE said it had tested the same products sold in the US and found no such residues.[33] After the pesticide allegations were made in 2003, Coca-Cola sales declined by 15%. In 2004, an Indian parliamentary committee backed up CSE's findings, and a government-appointed committee was tasked with developing the world's first pesticide standards for soft drinks. The Coca-Cola Company has responded that its plants filter water to remove potential contaminants and that its products are tested for pesticides and must meet minimum health standards before they are distributed.[34] In the Indian state of Kerala, sale and production of Coca-Cola, along with other soft drinks, has been banned.[35] Five other Indian states have announced partial bans on the drinks in schools, colleges and hospitals.[36] On Friday, September 22, 2006, the High Court in Kerala overturned the Kerala ban ruling that only the federal government can ban food products.[37]
In 2006, the United States Food and Drug Administration responded to reports that the carcinogen benzene was present in unhealthy levels in certain soft drinks by conducting a survey of more than 100 soft drinks and other beverages. Based on this limited survey, the FDA stated that it "believes that the results indicate that benzene levels are not a safety concern for consumers."[3] [4][5]
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Urban legends and unusual uses
The numerous urban legends about Coca-Cola have led the Urban Legends Reference Pages to devote a whole section of their site to "Cokelore." Coca-Cola has in particular been the target of urban legends decrying the drink for its supposedly copious amounts of acid (its pH value of 2.5 is midway between vinegar and gastric acid), or the "life-threatening" effects of its carbonated water. These urban legends usually take the form of "fun facts" — for example, "highway troopers use Coke to clean blood from highways after accidents," "somebody once died in a Coke-drinking competition," or "Coke can dissolve a tooth overnight."[1] All of these claims are false. (While highway troopers do not use Coca-Cola for this purpose, the television program MythBusters showed that Coca-Cola could be used as a blood cleaning agent, if an expensive one.) Claims of Coca-Cola's unique tooth dissolving properties have been tested on UK television show Brainiac: Science Abuse where a tooth was left overnight in a glass of Coke. It proved Cola could not dissolve a tooth. Coca-Cola was also once believed to have been a possible form of birth control due to this allegedly high acidity level being supposedly able to kill sperm. [2]
One unusual use for Coke is as a rust-control substance — the phosphoric acid in Coke converts iron oxide to iron phosphate, and as such can be used as an initial treatment for corroded iron and steel objects being renovated, etc. The acid can be used to anodize titanium according to various websites.[24] Corroded battery terminals on cars are often corrected through the use of Coca-Cola. The MythBusters tested this and found that Coke seemed to be no more effective than any other liquid.
According to popular belief, the coca leaf extract cocaine was once added to Coca-Cola. Because cocaine is naturally present in untreated coca leaves, small amounts of cocaine were also present in the beverage. Today's Coca-Cola uses "spent" coca leaves, those that have been through a cocaine extraction process, to flavor the beverage. Since this process cannot extract the cocaine alkaloids at a molecular level, the drink still contains trace amounts of the stimulant.[25] The United States DEA oversees the importation of coca for Coca-Cola, and later sale of the extracted cocaine to the drug industry.[26]
Pit crews in NASCAR sometimes pour coke on their pit stalls to create traction for the racecar when exiting/entering the pit.
Emory University is sometimes refered to as Coca-Cola University becuase of various Coke Exec Alumni (Candler, Woodruff, Goizueta) and the fact that a large part of Emory's 4.3 billion dollar endowment originates from donated Coke stock.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Advertising
Coca-Cola's advertising has had a significant impact on American culture, and is frequently credited with the "invention" of the modern image of Santa Claus as an old man in red-and-white garments; however, while the company did in fact start promoting this image in the 1930s in its winter advertising campaigns, it was already common before that.[22] In the 1970s, a song from a Coca-Cola commercial called "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," produced by Billy Davis, became a popular hit single, and is widely considered one of the best advertising campaigns in history. The song and commercial is credited with helping Coca-Cola retain its market from the burgeoning Pepsi-Cola Co. and to help make Coke attractive to young people again. Coke's advertising has been rather pervasive, as one of Woodruff's stated goals was to ensure that everyone on Earth drank Coca-Cola as their preferred beverage. Advertising for Coke is now almost ubiquitous, especially in southern areas of North America, such as Atlanta, where Coke was invented.
Coca-Cola has gone through a number of different advertising slogans in its long history, including "The pause that refreshes," "Things Go Better," "(It's) The Real Thing," "Coke is it" and "Always Coca-Cola" (see Coca-Cola slogans).
As a result of extensive campaigns in the early 20th century, the Coca-Cola drink has a high degree of identification with the United States itself, being considered an "American brand" or to a small extent as representing America (compare Mickey Mouse). By 1948, it was reported that when non-Americans thought of democracy—a trait associated with the United States—they thought of Coca-Cola.[23]
Starting in 1975, Pepsi-Cola ran a series of television advertisements showing people participating in taste tests in which they expressed a preference for Pepsi over Coke. Coca-Cola ran ads to combat Pepsi's ads in an incident sometimes referred to as the Cola Wars; one of Coke's ads compared the so-called Pepsi challenge to two chimpanzees deciding which tennis ball was furrier.
Coca-Cola has a long history of sports marketing relationships, which over the years have included several major sports leagues both in the United States and internationally. Two such notable instances are Coca-Cola's sponsorship of the Olympic games, with Coke being the first-ever sponsor of an Olympic game at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and also Coca-Cola's sponsorship of FIFA since 1978 in the 1978 FIFA World Cup, which organizes football tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup. The English Football (Soccer) division 1, (the second division behind the Barclays-sponsored FA Premier League) has now been re-named the Coca-Cola Championship. Coca-Cola owns a Japanese rugby union club, the Coca Cola West Red Sparks, who are based in Fukuoka city, Kyūshū, and compete in the Top League. A number of NASCAR's most popular drivers such as Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart, Jeff Burton, Mark Martin and Greg Biffle are part of the Coca-Cola Racing Family.
Coca-Cola frequently has rewards programs or sweepstakes' with codes or messages printed on the bottom of caps. Coca-Cola currently has a rewards program called "mycokerewards" (using a name designed to appeal to teens). Drinkers use codes found on bottles and 6/12 packs (which earn three times the points that bottles do) and redeem them on the mycokerewards Website. The codes have also been sold on auction sites such as eBay for significantly cheaper prices and redeemed on mycokerewards for prizes, which are resold on the auction Website. This has caused eBay to limit the amount of caps sold per auction to 20 caps and Coca-Cola to limit 10 caps per day to be redeemed.
Production
Bottle and logo design
Coca-Cola formula
As a publicity marketing strategy started by Ernest Woodruff, the company presents the formula of Coca-Cola as one of the most closely-held trade secrets in modern business, to which only a few employees have access.[18] In particular, the secret ingredient "7X" has long been touted an integral component of Coca Cola's formula though it has never been established what, if anything, the "X" refers to. It has been stated that Coca-Cola had employees mix the drink by numbers assigned to specific ingredients rather than by name, to avoid the possibility of employees reverse-engineering the recipe. However, experienced perfumers and food scientists — today aided by modern analytical methods — can easily identify the composition of food products, a fact that is further supported by the many cola flavorings and competing soft drinks like Pepsi.[19]
In his book For God, Country and Coca-Cola, author Mark Pendergrast claims to have discovered a recipe for the drink in the company's archives. It includes: Citrate caffein, ext. vanilla, F.E. Coco (fluid extract of coca), citric acid, lime juice, sugar, water, and caramel sufficient, and "X": oils of orange, lemon, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, and neroli.[4]
Franchised production model
The actual production and distribution of Coca-Cola follows a franchising model. The Coca-Cola Company only produces a syrup concentrate, which it sells to various bottlers throughout the world who hold Coca-Cola franchises for one or more geographical areas. The bottlers produce the final drink by mixing the syrup with filtered water and sugar (or artificial sweeteners) and fill it into cans and bottles, which the bottlers then sell and distribute to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants and food service distributors. The bottlers are normally also responsible for all advertisement and other sales initiatives within their areas.
The Coca-Cola Company owns minority shares in some of its largest franchisees, like Coca-Cola Enterprises, Coca-Cola Amatil, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC) and Coca-Cola FEMSA, but fully independent bottlers produce almost half of the volume sold in the world.
As the bottler adds sugar and sweeteners, the sweetness of the drink is said to differ in various parts of the world, in order to cater for local taste.
The famous Coca-Cola logotype is said to have largely been created by John Pemberton's business partner, Frank Mason Robinson, in 1885. It was Robinson who came up with the name, and he also chose the logo’s distinctive cursive script. The typeface used, known as Spencerian script, was developed in the mid 19th century and was the dominant form of formal handwriting in the United States during that period.
The equally famous Coca-Cola bottle, called the "Contour bottle" within the company, but known to some as the "hobble skirt" bottle, was created in 1915 by a Swedish former glassblower, Alexander Samuelson, who had emigrated to the U.S. in the 1880's and was employed as a manager at The Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, one of Coca-Cola's bottle suppliers. According to the Coca-Cola Company, Samuelson took time to ponder a possible new design for the bottle after production at his plant was shut down due to a heat wave. Inspired, he considered the possibility of basing a new design on the kola nut or coca leaf, two of the drink's flagship ingredients. He sent an employee to research the shape of the two objects in question, but a misunderstanding led to the man returning with sketches of the cacao pod—a crucial ingredient in chocolate, but not Coca-Cola. According to the company, it was this mistaken design that was accepted and put into production.[20]
Although endorsed by the company, this version of events is not considered authoritative by many who cite its implausibility as difficult to believe. One alternative depiction has Raymond Loewy as the inventor of the unique design, but although Loewy did serve as a designer of Coke cans and bottles in later years, he was in the French Army in the year the bottle was invented and did not migrate to the United States until 1919. Others have attributed inspiration for the design not to the cacao pod, but to a Victorian hooped dress.[20]
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