Fizz

by Tristan Donovan

  The following year two new Indian-made colas filled the gap left by Coca-Cola. Parle Bisleri came out with Thums Up, even though the company’s boss, Ramesh Chauhan, thought cola wasn’t all that nice. “Cola is like beer, or like smoking,” he told Port magazine in 2011. “It’s an acquired taste.” Thums Up’s rival was Campa Cola. Created by former Coke bottler Pure Drinks, it sought to mimic Coca-Cola as closely as possible, even adopting the same Spencerian handwriting style for its logo. The two Indian sodas quickly developed a rivalry that was an Indian microcosm of Coke and Pepsi’s global war, complete with close ties to Indian politics. Thums Up established an early lead by sponsoring a tour of India by the West Indies cricket team and nailing Thums Up signs in stores and stalls across the nation. Within two years of its 1978 launch, Thums Up had started expanding outside India, opening plants in Kuwait, Singapore, Nigeria, and elsewhere. As Campa Cola struggled to catch up, it didn’t take long before personal ties between Thums Up’s Chauhan and the Janata Party on the one hand and Campa Cola boss Charanjit Singh’s position as a prominent member of Gandhi’s party on the other turned the Indian cola war political. After Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, her son Sanjay attacked Thums Up in the Indian Parliament, questioning its right to advertise itself as a “refreshing cola” when it contained no kola nut. A lawsuit followed, seeking to prevent Thums Up from calling itself a cola, but the court dismissed the claim, ruling that a cola was a carbonated drink with caffeine and that the presence of kola nut didn’t matter.

  Despite the attacks, Thums Up thrived. In 1991, two years after Pepsi’s launch in India, the drink held a 60 percent share of the soda market, a base so strong that when Coca-Cola returned to India it decided to pay $50 million for the rights to Thums Up rather than try to topple it. Today, Thums Up remains India’s number-one soft drink, ahead of Sprite, Pepsi and the number-four brand, Coca-Cola—making India, along with Peru and Scotland, one of just three places in the world where neither Pepsi nor Coke rule.

  In Peru, Coca-Cola’s hopes of becoming the South American nation’s favorite soda were thwarted by Inca Kola, a lurid yellow-gold fizz made from a mixture of local flavors, including the herb lemon verbena. The drink was created in 1935 by José Lindley, the son of an English immigrant family that opened a soda company in Lima in 1911. Lindley created the drink to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the Peruvian capital’s founding. To promote the drink, Lindley appealed to Peruvian nationalism, pushing the idea that to drink it was a sign of loyalty to the nation. By the 1970s Inca Kola had become as tied up with Peru’s national identity as Coca-Cola’s was with America’s. It pushed itself as “the flavor that unites Peru,” a message that plenty of Peruvians agreed with. As one Inca Kola fan told the New York Times in 1995 while drinking it with his daughter in a Lima chicken restaurant, “I tell [my daughter]: ‘This is our drink, not something invented overseas. It is named for your ancestors, the great Inca warriors.’” Eventually, after years of almost but not quite toppling it as Peru’s number-one soda, Coca-Cola resorted to paying an estimated $200 million to gain control of the beverage. When Coke president Doug Ivester toasted the 1999 deal with a glass of Inca Kola, the Peruvian press published photos of the Coca-Cola boss drinking it and hailed the moment as a defeat for the American giant, even as its national soda became part of the American beverage giant’s portfolio.

  A similar appeal to national pride also lay behind Scotland’s preference for Irn-Bru, a vivid rust-colored soda with a taste as unique as Dr Pepper, which one carpet-cleaning company claimed in 2012 caused more persistent carpet stains than red wine or curry. Irn-Bru started life in 1901 as Iron Brew, one of numerous sodas produced by the Glasgow-based soft drinks company A. G. Barr, which opened its doors in 1875 as an offshoot of a cork-cutting business. The company promoted Iron Brew as a strength-giving drink, backed with endorsements from Scottish sportsmen such as champion caber tosser Alex Munro who called it “a grand pick-me-up after a tussle.” By the 1950s it had changed its name to Irn-Bru to comply with changes to UK food labeling laws that made it illegal for the drink to be called Iron Brew because it didn’t contain iron and wasn’t brewed.

  While it had long been popular in Scotland, the link between Irn-Bru and Scottish identity really took off in the 1970s, on the back of the rapid growth of the Scottish independence movement. A. G. Barr adopted slogans that played up the drink’s Scottishness, such as “Made in Scotland from girders” and, in a reference to the country’s love of whiskey, “Scotland’s other national drink.” By 1975 Irn-Bru had edged ahead of Coca-Cola to become the best-selling soda in Scotland. By the 1990s Irn-Bru was as much a part of Scottishness as Inca Kola was part of being Peruvian, and it was keeping Coca-Cola at bay with a series of brash and often controversial ads that were shot through with sentimental nods to Scotland.

  Complaint-inspiring posters showed a photograph of a cow accompanied with the line “When I’m a burger I want to be washed down by Irn-Bru”; a TV ad featured a balaclava-wearing granny on a mobility scooter who rams a shop’s Irn-Bru display so that the cans fall into her wire basket before making her escape; and a newspaper ad showed a woman kissing a man next to words, “If I suck hard enough, maybe I can get my Irn-Bru back.” In a 1991 TV commercial, the company offered a pastiche of Pepsi and Coca-Cola’s all-American advertising to appeal to a rain-swept nation where it was hard to relate to bouncy US teens hanging out on sun-kissed Californian beaches. Over scenes of white-teethed smiling youths and break dancers, the ad’s soft rock soundtrack sang, “Wouldn’t you know it, it’s one of those ads, lots of kids with white teeth and giant shoulder pads, it’s not a drink by those crazy Yanks, it’s made right here, you know it’s tougher than tanks,” before ending with a customer getting headbutted by an Irn-Bru vending machine. As Scotland embraced the independence, Irn-Bru became an obvious and highly visible way of buying into Scottishness.

  But for all their domestic popularity Irn-Bru, Inca Kola, and Thums Up barely registered outside their home nations, and that they stand out so much as competition for Coke and Pepsi merely underlines just how successful Pepsi and Coca-Cola’s race for the global market was. Beginning with a minimal global reach at the start of World War II, the American cola superpowers conquered the world’s taste buds. They changed drinking habits, weaned people off local favorites, encouraged the consumption of cold drinks, spread American culture, paved the way for better relations with China and the Soviet Union, boosted economic growth, and helped create US presidents. The age of soda diplomacy might have ended with Ronald Reagan, who in 1976 accused President Ford of having “a foreign policy whose principal accomplishment seems to be our acquisition of the right to sell Pepsi-Cola in Siberia,” but when the Cold War ended, Coca-Cola’s dream of a world united by Coke had largely come true.

  The world had united around cola, usually Coca-Cola, and nothing said it more than the night the Berlin Wall fell—November 9, 1989. As East Germans poured into West Berlin that momentous evening, they were greeted by red Coca-Cola trucks handing out free Cokes. Almost none of the East Germans who crossed the border that night had ever tasted it before, but they all knew what it was, and knowing what it represented, they all wanted one. At the Brandenburg Gate alone, Coca-Cola gave away seventy thousand cans of its drink to joyous East Germans. One witness to the celebrations recalled seeing wide-eyed East Germans getting drunk while stuffing themselves with McDonald’s and Coca-Cola at Checkpoint Charlie and being bruised by the twenty-four-can cases of Coke that people were triumphantly carrying around with them.

  In the days following the opening of the wall, Coca-Cola dished out more free cases of Coca-Cola to East German visitors, who flocked to the company’s West Berlin warehouses in their plastic Trabant autos. As Heinz Wiezorek, the regional manager of Coca-Cola in Germany at the time, recalled in Coke chief Neville Isdell’s biography Inside Coca-Cola, “There were thousands of cars per day just circling the warehouse, which showed very clearly the hunger th
ey had for Coca-Cola.”

  Them and the world, Heinz. Them and the world.

  Soda fountain equipment on display at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where Charles Hires launched his pioneering root beer.

  The man who tickled our taste buds: John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  An artist’s impression of Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta, the first place in the world to sell Coca-Cola. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Asa Griggs Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola Company. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  The world’s first promotional coupon, the marketing trick that turned Coca-Cola into a runaway success. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the $50 million extravaganza that exposed millions to the fizzing pleasures of Coke, Dr Pepper, and Hires.

  An 1890s ad for Coca-Cola, which kept the same nickel price tag until 1951. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  New England’s homegrown soda Moxie was Coke’s big challenger until the 1930s, thanks to outlandish promotional devices such as these Horsemobiles. Town Archives, New London, NH

  Coke urges people to buy the real thing in this ad from 1914, when it found itself fighting countless cola copycats. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  The 1915 prototype of the now famous Coke bottle, created to help the company defend its trademark. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  The final version of the Coca-Cola bottle, later dubbed the world’s “most perfectly designed package” by Raymond Loewy. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  By 1994 the bottle was so famous that Coca-Cola could sell itself with its silhouette alone. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Coca-Cola turned itself into an icon with eye-catching images and concise slogans, such as this 1943 twist on its enduring “The pause that refreshes” theme and, most simply of all, 1946’s “Yes.” Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  President of Coca-Cola Robert Winship Woodruff, the man who guided the cola giant from 1923 until his death in 1985. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  While 1930s America was falling for Coca-Cola, Schweppes was still the premier soda brand in Britain. Courtesy of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

  Coca-Cola made itself part of the holiday season thanks to Haddon Sundblom, who started painting its iconic Santa ads in 1931 (left) and was still creating Coke-loving St. Nicks in 1963 (below). Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Coca-Cola’s holiday advertising took a new twist in 1994 when it introduced its CGI polar bears in a campaign that proved every bit as popular as Sundblom’s Santas. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Dr Pepper took a different approach to winning over winter customers with its seasonal reinvention as an alternative to mulled wine. Courtesy of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

  Like many sodas in the mid-twentieth century, Dr Pepper made its sugar and caffeine into a virtue by promoting itself as an energy booster. Courtesy of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

  Dr Pepper may have had a loyal following in Texas during the 1950s, when this ad ran, but it would take until the 1970s for the Waco soda to really break out of the Lone Star State. Courtesy of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

  By the time this 1966 ad arrived, Coca-Cola’s position as America’s favorite soft drink seemed unassailable … Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  … so its competitors got down with the kids, not least 7Up, which embraced 1960s psychedelia with its “Uncola” campaign, featuring out-there artwork such as this creation by Nancy Martell. Courtesy of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

  Coca-Cola delivered another iconic advertising moment (and a hit single) with this 1971 TV appeal for world harmony. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Coca-Cola reaches out to the world with this 1940 ad. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  But winning over the world wasn’t always easy; Coke faced tight government restrictions in Japan and attempts to get it in banned from France to protect the country’s wine industry. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  If you can’t beat them, buy them: Thums Up, India’s number-one cola, and Peru’s nationalistic fizz Inca Kola, both of which were eventually bought by the Coca-Cola Company. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Communist Czechoslovakia’s Kofola—the Warsaw Pact’s answer to Coke. While it fell out of favor at the end of the Cold War, it made a comeback following a relaunch in the early 2000s.

  Irn-Bru made itself part of Scottish identity with tongue-in-cheek ads like this one.

  Smash and grab: Irn-Bru’s 2001 TV ad “Electric Lady.”

  Few non-American sodas have made an impact in the United States, but Schweppes did, thanks in large part to its twenty-year advertising campaign starring British Royal Air Force wing commander Edward Whitehead. Courtesy of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute

  Coca-Cola’s World of Coca-Cola, one o Atlanta’s biggest visitor attractions. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  The “secret vault” exhibit in the World of Coca-Cola shows how the mystery of the drink’s formula still captures the imagination today. Courtesy of the CocaCola Company

  Boldly going where no soda has gone before: Coca-Cola’s space can. Courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

  Pepsi gate-crashed Coca-Cola’s attempt to become the first soda in space with its own zero-gravity can.

  The fight over soda and obesity gets personal in this ad from the Center for Consumer Freedom criticizing New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to restrict soda serving sizes.

  Slow Cow, Canada’s chilled-out answer to the rise of energy drinks.

  Antonio Ramos and Caroline Mak, the founders of Brooklyn Soda Works—part of the growing craft soda movement. Portrait by Chantal Martineau

  8

  Racists, Eco-Freaks, and Cancer Rats

  As the first shots rang out in the global cola war, back in America Pepsi was on its knees. Pepsi president Walter Mack’s cunning Mexican syrup scam during World War II had saved the company from the ravages of wartime rationing, but its hopes of a peacetime recovery were fading fast.

  The problem was inflation. After Japan surrendered in 1945, businesses and unions began pushing the federal government to drop wartime controls on prices and wages. Under pressure from all sides, Washington caved. But the sudden removal of these restrictions sent the country into an inflationary spiral. Within months prices and wages skyrocketed, and America felt the pinch of double-digit inflation. Pepsi and other soda companies watched in horror as the rising cost of materials and wages devoured their profits. Larger costs meant smaller profits. Smaller profits meant reduced marketing budgets. Reduced marketing budgets meant fewer sales. Fewer sales meant smaller profits. It was a feedback loop that threatened to drag soda companies into ruin.

  For Moxie the spike in inflation was the final straw. The New England soda pop had been in decline for years, crippled by a series of business misjudgments. The advertising cutbacks it made in the 1920s handed the advantage to its competitors. Moxie’s paranoia about soda fountains passing off cheaper imitation syrup as its own had caused it to shut itself off from this lucrative market. The company’s preference for opening its own bottling plants rather than adopting the franchising approach of Coca-Cola also limited its distribution reach. Moxie was also out of promotional ideas. Thirty years had passed since its eye-catching Horsemobiles with their model horses made their 1917 debut, but rather than finding new ways to drum up interest Moxie continued to flog its aging gasoline steeds. As rising costs bit deep, the company retreated to its New England heartland, disappearing bit by bit from stores and eventually sinking into obscurity as a dimly remembered regional soda catering to a dwindling fan base of diehard Moxie drinkers. That even its most loyal drinkers had to admit its licorice-like aftertaste took some getting used to didn’t help either.

&nb
sp; As Moxie faded away, Pepsi found itself fighting for survival. It could have increased the price of a Pepsi, but the cost of a soda hadn’t changed for the best part of a century. Soda cost a nickel back when John Pemberton cooked up his first batch of Coca-Cola, and it was still five cents in 1947. Americans expected five-cent pop, and any company that increased its price faced losing customers to competitors who held onto the traditional price tag, a risk Royal Crown Cola learned about the hard way. In 1947 Royal Crown upped the price of its cola from five to six cents and watched sales collapse. Within weeks its bottlers had returned to the nickel price point, having concluded that declining profit was better than no profit at all.

  Adding to the pressure was Coca-Cola. The Atlanta cola king knew its smaller rivals with their bigger bottles were more vulnerable to rising prices, and Coke decided to stick to its nickel price tag for as long as it could bear, hoping that its competitors would either go bust or be forced to raise their prices before it would.

  If Coke’s price freeze and cost-sensitive shoppers weren’t enough of a problem, Pepsi also had its advertising to consider. Pepsi had turned itself into America’s number-two soda with its “twice as much for a nickel too” promotional campaign. Increasing prices would require a complete marketing overhaul, and there was no guarantee the company would develop an equally powerful campaign.