In the final season of Mad Men, the McCann-Erickson boss Dick Hobart, in a wonderfully starched and oily performance from H Richard Greene, tantalises the newly acquired talent from Sterling-Cooper with the glittering corporate accounts they will soon be handling. To Don Draper, the prize stallion at last in his fold, he seductively whispers a single golden phrase: “Coca-Cola.”
Draper is on the outset of a spiritual crisis that leaves him adrift on Madison Avenue but the phrase wanders with him. For all the ingenious consumer products and marketing campaigns to make Americans want more, Coca-Cola remains the sui generis. No name will ever sound as good, no logo capable of conjuring up the same rush of global interpretations of whatever “America” is to the imaginer.
Credit for both the name and logo are attributed to Frank Mason Robinson, the bookmaker and partner of the Atlanta pharmacist John Stith Pemberton, who had originally invented a local coca wine “for fatigue of mind and body”.
An 1886 city prohibition law forced him to pivot to a non-alcoholic beverage, and the first known advert for Coca-Cola appeared in the Atlanta Journal that May, promising a soda fountain drink that was – in Trumpian full caps – delicious, refreshing, exhilarating and invigorating. The men sold the rights before fully understanding that they’d created the fountain from which the world will always drink.
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Among Coca-Cola’s most loyal customers is US president Donald Trump, who favours the diet variety. One of the moderations he made to the Oval Office was the installation of a small red button in a wooden box sitting within reach on the Resolute desk. Whenever he is concerned about fatigue of mind and body, he presses the button and someone – possibly JD Vance – comes scurrying in with an iced glass of the restorative elixir.
Showing Fox News host Laura Ingraham around his new office several months ago, Trump was pleased that many visitors assumed that the red button was, in fact, the scary one. “They say if I press this, it’s the end of the world,” he joked. “And it doesn’t seem to work out that way.”
Given the stresses of the week just past for Trump, who has had to juggle the twin menaces of Vladimir Putin and Jeffrey Epstein, it would be understandable if that red button was smoking from overuse. But despite these demands and constant questions about tariffs, about the Federal Reserve chairman, about the dollar, Trump still found time to announce a fundamental change to his favourite beverage.
Following a conversation with Coca-Cola about returning to the use of real sugar cane in their product, he was pleased to announce they had agreed to do so. “This will be a very good move by them – You’ll See,” he posted in remarks on Wednesday. “It’s just better.”
The corporate giant all but choked on its own product as it responded with a “this is news to us” type response: “appreciate president Trump’s enthusiasm” and “more details on new, innovative offerings” etc. The switch mooted by Trump originates in the drive by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to Make America Healthy Again.
[ Donald Trump says Coca-Cola will use cane sugar in US production of CokeOpens in new window ]
The announcement kicked off an instant bout of nostalgia on the morning-show circuit among guests who remembered when Coca-Cola used to taste better, in the 1970s and early 1980s. Until that point, sugar cane was, in fact, the key ingredient. The high cost of sugar combined with the national subsidisation of the corn industry led to the mass production of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and, by 1985, the changeover was complete. That April, the company launched an advertising drive that would have caused Dick Hobart to pale, actually announcing the change in its “New Coke” campaign, a misstep which the company’s website details under the headline: “The biggest marketing blunder ever?”
The days kept turning. But US visitors to Mexico have always noticed that the version of Coca-Cola produced there, with sugar cane, tastes better. For years, “Mexi-Coke” was a highly desired import until it was officially launched as a luxury alternative to US produced Coca-Cola.
Now, the original taste is returning. The Corn Refiners’ Association has warned that halting production of HFCS will “cost thousands of American food manufacturing jobs, depress farm income and boost imports of foreign sugar, all with no nutritional benefit”. The counterargument is that corn syrup accounts for just 3 per cent of the 15 billion bushels of corn produced annually.
Food health advocates may despair that a debate over replacing one type of sugary source with another is woefully far from the point. Americans consume 40 billion gallons of Coke each year, out-guzzling the Mexicans 2:1.
But lost in the debate is a kernel of the truth with which Donald Trump has been persuading his voters for the past decade. Coca-Cola is America’s favourite drink and yet they have to make do with an inferior version of John Stith Pemberton’s original recipe. All for more profit. A wrong turn was taken. Time to start pressing the red button and demanding, always, the real thing.
