It was the mid-1990s, the elevator door opened and the president of Coca-Cola USA stepped inside. When he saw me (probably looking particularly wiped out that day), he casually mentioned – ‘Joni, I think you must have the toughest job in this company’… then the doors opened on his chosen floor and he left me there feeling a bit more weary but at the same time feeling injected with some strange sense of strength and responsibility. Afterall, I was the marketing girl responsible for the flagship brand (Coca-Cola) in the flagship country (USA). That was heavy but exhilarating all at the same time.
While it seemed to be the centre of the universe, the USA was only one of over 200 countries where Coca-Cola was sold. It was the hay days of global advertising produced by Hollywood filmmakers (remember the Coke Polar Bears?). There was a ‘global advertising department’ that went about creating and distributing ads for us mere country managers to use.
That was fine and those ads made people quite fond of the brand, but in the USA we were struggling to get people to actually drink more Coca-Cola — and we had the added threat of Pepsi’s latest challenge ‘Blue’ which they were planning to take straight in to Coke’s heartland markets at Christmastime.
When I approached our Global Marketing Chief about the possibility of receiving more effective advertising, he told me to stay out of advertising and go focus on our ‘local promotions’. So that’s what we did.
To pre-empt Pepsi’s plans, we put together a retail-led promotion which featured one of our most important Christmas assets, Santa (created originally by Haddon Sundblom for Coca-Cola ads in the 1930s). We put him all over Coca-Cola cans and bottles and named them ‘Santa Packs’.
Our clever ‘promotional’ ad agency, WB Doner, created a TV ad called ‘Christmas Caravan’ to simply promote the arrival of Santa Packs – hauled in to town on Coke trucks of course. The trucks lit up everything they passed by… and the rhythmic hum of ‘holidays are coming, holidays are coming‘ filled everyone witnessing their arrival with excitement and anticipation. This attention-grabbing ad combined with appealing pack design and inescapable store displays, made people buy Coke instead of Pepsi. It worked!
Even though it started life as a local USA promotion, this advertising quickly became a global phenomenon.
The boss was right, it was a tough job – but when I see that commercial still appear on TV each year at Christmastime, I can’t help but feel it was all worth it.
Santa, may you continue to pilot Coke’s Christmas sleigh for many years to come!
This story is dedicated to my dear friend Lauren Bryant who lost her battle with breast cancer in 2004. Lauren ran the USA advertising department at Coca-Cola and we worked alongside each other on this Christmas Campaign. I can still remember her walking in to my office with the story boards for this now famous commercial saying, ‘I think you’re gonna like this one’.
