For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

by Mark Pendergrast

  BLACK FRIDAY AND BLOODY CHAIRS

  Such unrest was unthinkable at the comfortable red brick building on North Avenue, where loyal employees enjoyed a lifelong sinecure, eating thirty-five-cent lunches and drinking all the free Coke they wanted. Jobs at the Company might not yield the highest pay in town, but they did mean prestige and security. Or so everyone thought until the fall of 1957, when Curt Gager, the former hatchet man for General Foods, moved to Atlanta and conducted a series of mysterious meetings with department heads.

  On Friday, November 8, one out of ten employees reported to work at 9 a.m. as usual and were summarily fired, given severance pay, and ordered to clean their desks and leave by 9:30 a.m.* Some managers found their offices locked, belongings stacked in the hallway. Black Friday, as the day was quickly labeled, came as a complete shock to almost everyone. Nor did there seem to be any logic to the dismissals. “We had some people that weren’t worth a shit, but they stayed,” Charlie Bottoms remembered. Others, longtime employees doing “a fantastic job,” were dismissed. In the advertising department, Troy Neighbors, a popular twenty-seven-year veteran, was a victim. The young man reassigned to Neighbors’ desk shuddered. “I’m not going to sit in that chair,” he said. “The blood’s not dry yet.”

  The event shattered lives. One man drowned himself in nearby Lake Spivey. At the end of the day, after everyone had left the office, a guilt-stricken woman in the personnel office shot herself in the head. Because their identity as Coca-Cola men or women was so all-important, those suddenly shut out of the soft drink family panicked. “For most people,” Bottoms said, “the loss of face in leaving here was so great that they would stay even if they had to wipe the bathroom out.”

  No trace of Black Friday exists in the Company archives, nor did anything about the layoffs or suicides appear in the Atlanta papers. “At that time, Coca-Cola could have kept anything out of the paper,” one employee recalled. “Robert Woodruff could have run naked across the top of the building with flood lights on him without any news reports.” It is almost inconceivable that the Boss didn’t sanction the mass firings, but he certainly took pains to disassociate himself from the event. A few months later, in the spring of 1958, Bill Robinson found himself kicked upstairs to board chairman, with Curt Gager pushed out of the fold soon after. The two outsiders had done the dirty work, shaking up the tradition-bound Company, and employees were relieved when Lee Talley, an old Coca-Cola man who had come up through the ranks, was named the new president. The son of a Methodist minister, Talley wore red suspenders and spoke with a soft drawl, but underneath his country-boy grin, he was a steel-edged, tough-minded manager.

  THE END OF A FRANTIC DECADE

  As the noisy, materialistic, conformist Eisenhower era raced toward the turbulent sixties, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were locked in a grim struggle for world domination. Coke’s lead had been cut to two-to-one and “an era of aloof grandeur had ended,” as one commentator noted. The older soft drink would never stand alone again, though Company executives consoled themselves with the knowledge that intense competition spelled increased sales for both colas at other beverages’ expense. Coca-Cola stock had resumed its steady upward trend, splitting three-for-one in 1960.

  The McCann-Erickson men had begun to find more effective themes after the disastrous around-the-world campaign. The McGuire Sisters sang on radio and TV, urging consumers to be “really refreshed” with Coke, implying that Pepsi just wouldn’t do. For the first time, photographers sought real-life scenes involving Coke for the “America Pauses” series. Coke was the “sign of good taste,” a slogan that performed triple duty in reference to the ubiquitous signs, the supposedly refined sensibilities of Coke consumers, and the literal good taste of the product. The “Party From Your Pantry” series depicted Coke as a fitting complement to tempting cold cuts, fruit salads, and barbecued chicken—a direct appeal to supermarket sales. Special displays featured Coke with Ritz crackers and Triscuits, while the Company sent food editors packets of menus, photographs, and party game ideas.

  The most innovative program of the late fifties was Coca-Cola’s Hi-Fi Club, aimed at teenagers. Playing on the enormous popularity of local disc jockeys on top-40 radio stations, the Company’s public relations agency, Hill & Knowlton, collaborated with McCann men to create instant teen “clubs” built around pop music and the proper soft drink. “The D.J. would run out of things to say,” McCann man Neal Gilliatt recalled. “We gave him something to talk about and got good placement. We’d conduct taped interview of hot celebrities and he could put his own voice into them. It worked like gangbusters.” By the end of 1959, there were clubs in 325 cities, with over two million members. The local Coca-Cola bottler hosted weekly dance parties at which the radio show provided the music and entertainment. The bottler and his wife often chaperoned the affair, ensuring that the lights remained undimmed and that nothing stronger than Coke was served. The $1.5 million invested in the Hi-Fi Clubs was well spent, as Coke edged up on Pepsi’s lead in the teen market.

  Faced with these Coca-Cola tactics, Al Steele redoubled his efforts to fire up his Pepsi bottlers. More than any other man, Steele epitomized the hustling fifties. In 1955, he had married actress Joan Crawford—ironically, a Coca-Cola girl in 1930s ads. Together, the two embarked on a nonstop life of travel, logging over a hundred thousand miles a year and opening new Pepsi plants in country after country. In 1957, they visited twenty foreign lands, where the actress, always holding a Pepsi bottle, was greeted by ecstatic fans. As Crawford’s daughter Christina recalled, “she had bottles of Pepsi next to her at press conferences, cases of Pepsi backstage when she went on talk shows, and she learned to mention the company name whenever she was interviewed for any purpose whatsoever.”

  In public, Joan Crawford was the perfect wife to her fourth husband, but she did not come cheap, and the Pepsi executive went deeply into debt, which only fueled his frenzied need to boost soft drink sales. In 1959, he conducted a six-week whirlwind tour of the United States he dubbed “Adarama,” a $200,000 extravaganza to whip up bottler enthusiasm. On April 18, the night after the grueling tour’s end, Steele died suddenly of a heart attack, days short of his fifty-eighth birthday. His widow soon joined the board, where she proved to be, as a Pepsi man said, “one of the company’s most treasured and highly valued assets.” Ultimately, she logged over three million miles for Pepsi.

  A few months later, halfway around the world in Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon loudly argued with Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev over America’s capitalistic virtues, as exemplified by a model kitchen at the American National Exhibition. Despite the tension, Nixon fulfilled his pledge to Don Kendall, head of Pepsi’s international sales efforts. Leading the belligerent Russian leader to the soft drink stand—Coca-Cola had refused to participate in the Communist fair—he cajoled Khrushchev into sampling Pepsi while the photographers’ light bulbs flashed. “KHRUSHCHEV LEARNS TO BE SOCIABLE,” declared headlines around the world.

  Although Nixon returned home a hero for standing his ground during the kitchen debate, this conniving friend of Pepsi was about to engage in a bitter presidential campaign that he would lose to John F. Kennedy, a Coke drinker. As the sixties ushered in the New Frontier, Coca-Cola led the way.

  __________________

  * Robert Woodruff sometimes abused his extraordinary power. When he was annoyed with one of his managers, he might summon him to Atlanta, keep him waiting for a week, then summarily fire him. When Woodruff decided that Bill Hobbs was not an effective president, he let him know in the rudest possible manner—one Monday morning, Hobbs found his office door locked and was informed that his possessions would be sent to his home. Woodruff could be, as one source put it, “ruthless as hell.”

  † Woodruff’s interest in medical research kindled in the 1930s when he discovered the prevalence of malaria at Ichauway. Because of his concern, the disease was eliminated in southwest Georgia within a few years. When his mother later died of cancer, Wood
ruff turned his money to fighting that malady, and in 1947 the Boss donated land for the CDC near Emory University.

  * In 1948, Eisenhower became president of Columbia University. Three years later, he moved to Paris as supreme leader of NATO troops. While there, he lunched with James Farley and Alexander Makinsky.

  † Eisenhower and Woodruff were close enough friends for Ike to twit the Boss about his golf game. When the two were playing as partners one day, someone asked Eisenhower what his handicap was. “Woodruff,” he promptly responded.

  * In 1951, Woodruff lobbied Congress for a new coin worth seven and a half cents so that Coke’s vending machines could accept it, but for once the Boss could not prevail.

  * Jacobson turned many celebrities and politicians into speed freaks, including Alan Jay Lerner, Tennessee Williams, Yul Brynner, Zero Mostel, Nelson Rockefeller, and Marlene Dietrich. Eddie Fisher later met President John Kennedy, another Jacobson addict. Kennedy didn’t question what was in the shots. “I don’t care if there’s panther piss in there,” he said, “as long as it makes me feel good.”

  * One night at dinner in New York, a top executive told Woodruff that the only job that might attract him would be the presidency of The Coca-Cola Company. “You’re hired,” the Boss said. Later in the evening, Woodruff asked him how he planned to run the Company. “With an iron hand,” his friend answered. “I’ll take the burden off your shoulders. I’ll make the decisions and call all the shots.” Deadpan, Woodruff said, “You’re fired.”

  * In 1955, faced with new sizes, bottle manufacturers complained about the massive inventory needed to service different plants, their locations blown into the bottle base. When bottles were left anonymous, however, consumers complained that they couldn’t play “Far Away,” a game in which the bottle from the most distant point won.

  * Woodruff never really gave up ultimate authority at the Company. “Don’t take this retirement business too seriously,” he wrote to Max Keith thirteen years later. “However official it is, you’ll learn that it doesn’t mean much. I’ve been through it half a dozen times.”

  * Poet James Dickey helped write such glorious lines in the late fifties as a McCann-Erickson employee. “I didn’t mind writing for Coke,” he recalled. “It was the easiest thing in the world. My wrestling match was with my poetry. I sold my soul to the devil all day and tried to buy it back at night.” In 1959, the head of the Atlanta agency introduced Dickey to a bank executive, adding: “And Jim’s hobby is writing poetry.” Dickey thought, “That ties it. Hobby, my ass! This job is my hobby; the poetry is my real work.” He quit soon afterward.

  * Coke went to great lengths to secure scientific support. With Coke funding, Dr. Frederick J. Stare, a Harvard nutritionist, wrote articles in McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal in 1954, suggesting Coke as an appropriate part of a teen diet. Dr. Glenville Giddings of Emory conducted research indicating Coke’s harmlessness to teeth and health until his retirement in 1957, when he was put on a $12,000 annual retainer by the Company.

  * The actual number of people who were fired is unclear, since no one at the Company officially talked about it. Some sources insisted that one out of three were dismissed.

  ~ 16 ~

  Paul Austin’s Turbulent Sixties

  Things Go Better With Coca-Cola,

  Things Go Better With Coke.

  —Advertising slogan, 1963–1968

  Do your own thing.

  —Unofficial slogan of the counterculture

  In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy, asserting that he represented “a new generation,” spoke of renewal, change, energy, faith, devotion, and sacrifice. With his inspirational words, the complacency of the fifties gave way to the adrenal rush of youth, though no one stopped to question exactly what the President’s men had in mind. Eisenhower, writing to Robert Woodruff, complained bitterly that Kennedy’s cabinet choices lacked experience. One was a “crackpot,” the other indecisive, and the third “famous only for his ability to break the treasury of a great state.” Why, Ike wanted to know, did Atlanta journalist Ralph McGill praise Kennedy?

  Woodruff, however, attracted by the potency of Kennedy’s charisma, had already arranged Coca-Cola liaisons with the new President. Boisfeuillet (pronounced BO-full-ay) Jones, an Emory University administrator and Woodruff associate, accepted a top post under Abe Ribicoff in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Ben Oehlert, the perennial Washington insider, befriended Vice President Johnson, calling him Lyndon and posing with him and a beauty contest winner. Morton Downey, already an intimate of the Kennedy clan, and traditional Democrat James Farley quickly established warm ties with the White House, with Farley offering to be “available at any time” to talk “about anything” with JFK. After a 1961 South American foray, Farley conveyed his lengthy impressions to the president. In 1963, Kennedy scrawled “from a consumer” on an autographed photograph of himself drinking a Coke and dispatched it to Big Jim. “It was kind indeed of you,” the Coke ambassador responded, to “publicly give proof of the fact that you find the product—to use the advertising term—‘Delicious and Refreshing.’” According to one source, Kennedy offered Robert Woodruff the U.S. ambassadorship to England—a post Kennedy’s father had held—but the Boss declined.

  Kennedy’s plans for a manned moon mission, introduced during his first State of the Union address, inspired a number of eager entrepreneurs. “I just heard President Kennedy,” one Michigan man wrote to The Coca-Cola Company in May of 1961. “I hereby make formal application for the exclusive Coca-Cola franchise on the Moon.” He also modestly requested sole distributorship for all bodies and planets in space, adding that he could “think of nothing that is more symbolic of our way of life than a Coca-Cola sign.” Apparently astronaut Gus Grissom agreed, assuring his son that “when you’re my age they’ll have Coke machines on the moon.”

  While requests for Coke franchises in outer space were merely amusing, Coca-Cola jumped aggressively into the sixties under Lee Talley’s direction, introducing Fanta flavors nationally and offering Sprite as a lemon/lime alternative to the market leader, 7-Up. The first nonreturnable bottles were implemented to meet the demand for “convenience” packaging. At the same time, Talley delved into Coke’s huge cash hoard, buying Minute Maid for $72.5 million.* With the orange juice giant, Coke also acquired Tenco, a coffee and tea manufacturer. “THIS IS COCA-COLA?” queried a 1960 Business Week headline. The traditionally single-minded Company was in an “expansionist mood” along with the country, the journalist noted. Coca-Cola was even available in cans.

  A traditional Coca-Cola loyalist, Talley brought a determinedly objective managerial style to the Company. In 1961, the Company hardly paused to celebrate its silver anniversary, afraid that Pepsi might advance against a self-congratulatory Company. Similarly, Talley had no patience with tension between fountain, bottle, and pre-mix sale of Coca-Cola. No one, he noted sternly in a 1961 memo, “should ever disparage the product Coca-Cola in any of its accepted forms of distribution, or draw unfavorable comparisons of one form against another.” As a token of its aggressive new stance, the Company sponsored a Tour of the World Sweepstakes, with $25,000 in traveler’s checks as a first prize. The Post Office complained when a flood of envelopes containing bottle caps jammed their new electronic machines.

  STRUGGLING FOR A THEME

  Though such promotions temporarily boosted sales, the Company’s resolve alone wasn’t enough to build and sustain marketing momentum. It sorely needed another Archie Lee. With the baby boomers hitting their teens, the Coke advertising team struggled for a campaign to match the crackling energy of youth in the air. They hired singer Anita Bryant, a fresh-scrubbed born-again Christian who, as a former Miss Oklahoma, combined piety and sex appeal in the traditional Coca-Cola manner. As a fitting farewell to the fifties, Coke canceled its sponsorship of Ozzie and Harriet while purchasing TV airtime for Bryant to sing the new jingle. “Only Coca-Cola gives you that refreshing new feeling,” s
he chirruped. “Zing! What a feeling with a Coke.” The ad men dropped the word “pause” from their copy, since it seemed too staid for the times. Unfortunately, “Zing!” too had an artificial fifties ring to it, while the Imitator’s ads were proclaiming “Now it’s Pepsi for those who think young,” lilted by sassy-voiced Joanie Sommers—the debut Pepsi campaign by Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO). While both Coke and Pepsi ads featured young people disporting themselves with soft drinks, Coca-Cola’s direct pitch to any one segment of its vast market was limited by its strategic appeal to every possible consumer—though the Hi-Fi Club still attracted teens to Coke. Pepsi, on the other hand, was better positioned to target one market, since it had less to lose. While Coca-Cola advertising floundered, searching for a unifying theme, Pepsi’s efforts to identify with the dynamic youth market appeared more effective.

  In 1962, an unhappy Lee Talley called for an “agonizing reappraisal” of Coca-Cola’s program. In trying to make commercials “scientifically and mathematically defensible,” he observed, the McCann ads had lost direction. In the past year, they had presented Coca-Cola as light refreshment at a ski lift, the contents of a Coke Float with ice cream, or a drink by a swimming pool. “We have been garnishing it with a slice of lemon or lime,” Talley complained, or selling Coke as the chief ingredient of a wassail bowl of Lemon Grog. “We are losing sight of WHAT WE ARE,” he wrote, “in trying to be all things to all people, and in doing so we are blurring and confusing our image.” Talley suggested a new concept for 1963 advertising that would “ELEVATE THE PRODUCT and PUT IT ON A PEDESTAL.”

  The McCann men had been conducting intensive research for almost three years in search of the right campaign, swimming through “pretty deep motivational research waters,” as a Business Week writer put it. They discovered that Coke acted primarily as a social catalyst. McCann hired a slim, soft-spoken young copywriter and lyricist named Bill Backer to transpose the research findings into song. Backer, who hailed from a wealthy Charleston family and always wore trademark bowties, turned out to be the new Archie Lee; he demonstrated an uncanny knack for probing the heart of America during the next two decades. The resulting 1963 campaign, “Things Go Better With Coke,” introduced the “one-sight, one-sound, one-sell” approach with a slogan that dominated the sixties. The vaguely promising “things” that went better with the soft drink fit Coke’s traditional universal thrust. As the Limelighters, a popular folk group, sang in Backer’s upbeat jingle, “Food goes better with, / Fun goes better with, / You go better with Coke.” The umbrella ad covered the disparate approaches that had bothered Talley, allowing a Coke Float or ski-slope refreshment. As one McCann man put it, the ad attempted to be “‘in’ enough to win the young adults without being so ‘way out’ as to alienate people of other age groups.”*