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.