Have a Coke and a Smile

1980

They say that the politics on a church board of directors is so vicious because the issues are so small.

It’s similar in the advertising industry. It's not politics that are so vicious it's the stress. And it is generally because the issues are so small. Unless you're close up.

I lived thru two crises in my advertising career that were stressful beyond the pale.

But first let me tell you about one time a truly world shaking event affected me personally.

In 1979 I was a seasoned 31 year old account supervisor at Ogilvy and Mather’s Toronto office. At that time Ogilvy was the best ad agency in the world. And ours was the best office in the network. I had drunk the Kool Aid they served up to inculcate the team. I liked my work.

And, I had had a nice run at the agency. Over my time there I had worked for good clients like General Foods, Seagram’s and American Express. I had also developed an expertise in the important direct mail aspect of the advertising business and the new Managing Partner of the firm had been my mentor for a few years.

And it was stressful for me. Generally I’m not comfortable in my skin. I find it hard to do the politics of business life. I knew everyone. I liked most of them. And most of them liked me. But I made very few solid friendships. So I was a bit, or a lot, of a loner. I got by doing a good job in my silo.

The world shaking event happened late in 1979. One of my small clients was the promotional campaign selling Coins Commemorating the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to back its new communist government there was much condemnation which escalated quickly into a boycott of the Olympics. My client decided to quit the business to cut their losses. I had to go see the President of the agency to report the loss of the client. My president was an Alfred Hitchcock sort of man.

When I got to his office his door was open but his head was down.

I said, “excuse me, can I bother you for a minute”.

He looked up and totally in character replied “you already have”.

Ooops a bad start, but I plowed on. “Sorry to tell you this boss but we’ve lost the Coins client.”

He replied by asking “what have you done to try and keep them as a client?”.

To which I could only reply “you mean like calling up Brezhnev to see if he’d withdraw from Afghanistan?”  

Brezhnev was the dictator in the Soviet Union at the time. I was being sarcastic. My president was not amused. His lack of a sense my humour was a stressful part of my job.

By September of 1980 I was in a new job in a new agency. In retrospect with decades of hindsight it was a dumb thing to do. They liked me at Ogilvy and it would have been good to finish my career there but my personality that likes to chase shiny objects took over.

My new job was on the Coca Cola account at McCann Erickson for a hefty increase in salary. Coca Cola was the best brand name in the world at the time and I needed more money. Interest rates were 20 per cent and I owned a home.

I recall my last interview for the job. Gary Cooper was interviewing me. He was a crusty old veteran of the advertising wars not the actor. When it came time for me to accept the job or not he kept increasing his salary offer by $1,000 each time I asked a question. He wouldn’t answer my questions. He just kept raising the offer. I don’t know how far he would have gone but it was too much pressure for me. I stopped him too early.

The first crazy event after I started the new job was a bottler meeting scheduled for mid October about one month out. Bottler meetings were important. The franchisees who owned the plants that turned tap water and chemicals into Coca-Cola had to be happy. Good advertising made them happy.

The agency was feverishly adapting a new US campaign called Have a Coke and a Smile for use in Canada. It was exactly the kind of Coke advertising I loved. It was musical. It showed happy beautiful people enjoying themselves and paying off their activity with a deeply satisfying pull on a bottle of Coca-Cola. The word ‘pull’ seemed strange to me describe drinking Coke from a bottle. But it was part of the heritage of the brand’s advertising. (Play commercial)

Our adapting included creating a French Canadian version of the advertising campaign. Quebecois french is different from Parisian French so advertising flourishes in Quebec both for local clients and for national and multinationals who sell in Quebec.

Our Quebecois commercials used the same visuals but had their own soundtrack. The slogan was translated into Prend Un Coke et Souris. That was a very easy translation that was well received by all the stakeholders. We were moving along smoothly. Good for us.

Nothing is ever easy but we raced over the finish line a few days before the bottler meeting and were ready to put on a good show.

And a good show was doubly important because Roberto Goizueta Coca Cola’s new worldwide Chairman and CEO was in the room.

And then what could go wrong went wrong.

Mr. Goizueta, Cuban by birth, was attending with his French born wife. Parisian that is. They were sitting in the front row on the aisle so they had the best view of the new Quebecois advertising campaign as it was unveiled for the bottlers for the first time. The commercials had been seen and approved by our French Canadian team at the agency and by the French Canadian Coca Cola executives in Montreal and by a sampling of French Canadian bottlers who liked to use their power to say ‘non’ in advance when they could.

After the commercials were played to the 1,000 or so people in a large ballroom Mrs. Goizueta, that’s Mrs. Goizueta from Paris, France leans over to her husband the most powerful person in Coca Cola world and says

“Why is the slogan Have a Coke and a Mouse?”

Well don’t you know that what translates to Have a Coke and a Smile in Montreal translates to Have a Coke and a Mouse in Paris. Our slogan was dead as a dormouse.

Coca-Cola world hates like heck the thought of a mouse being in the bottle when a customer is enjoying one of those orgasmic pulls after some sweaty activity. Apparently it happens a few times a year around the world in spite of all the efforts to avoid the repugnant event.

Well, of course, some smelly stuff hit the fan. My senior colleague in Quebec lost his job PDQ. It also spelled doom for Gary Cooper as a senior exec in McCann Erickson’s Coca Cola world.

They agency suffered a few weeks of torment before the ship was righted and we sailed from port into the usual rough waters of our endless war against Pepsi Cola.

Surprisingly, all this was good for me. As the new guy I was seen as a breath of fresh air and the messiah for a future where this kind of thing never happened again. Ha Ha Ha

I didn’t know it when I took the job but Coca Cola is one of those brands where there is an inverse relationship between the positive perception of the  brand and the chaos that goes on behind the scenes. Pretty as a summer’s day on the outside. A cold winter week in Siberia on the inside. Where I was.

Case in point number two.

I was sitting at the our beautiful blond wood dining room table eating breakfast on November 5, 1980 reading, as I did every day, the Globe and Mail. When I looked at page A7 my heart skipped a beat and I said to myself ‘that’s not good’.

Page A7 was a full page ad for Pepsi Cola showing taste test research concluding that Pepsi tasted better than Coke. This was the advent of the Pepsi Challenge in Canada. As they say ‘one giant step for mankind, a descent into hell for me’.

My idyllic, disaster free, four week holiday since the Have a Coke and a Mouse meltdown was over. Once again crisis mode set in. This time it wasn’t enough to be the new guy on the block.

The Pepsi Challenge was both an advertising war and a merchandising war. There was a price war in stores between Pepsi and Coke. One brand or the other was always on sale for half price. The price war was so vicious that my senior client told us his mother wouldn’t buy Coca Cola unless it was half price.

Our wonderful new Have a Coke and a Smile campaign was quickly changed to hard hitting commercials featuring Bill Cosby. I couldn’t understand the strategy. Coca Cola’s  way of fighting the Pepsi Challenge was to advertise that since Coke had the largest market share it must be the best tasting. I’d say the ads were tortured at best to make their point. It was only the merchandising war that saved the day for Coke.

My tenure at McCann Erickson ended in 1982. I missed the relatively successful launch of Diet Coke soon after and the disastrous temporary replacement of the original formula with New Coke in 1985. That must have been some exciting journey. I’m glad I missed it.