The weather is getting hotter and hotter, what could be happier than an iced Coke? While enjoying the smoothness brought by Coca-Cola, have you ever thought that the Coke bottle you are holding has evolved into what it is today after hundreds of years of “cultivation”.
More than 100 years ago, the Coca-Cola Company launched the world’s first bottled Coke. This decision, which seems no big deal today, was considered unprecedented at the time, because in the first 10 years after its establishment in 1886, Coca-Cola actually did not have a bottle. of. The way of selling at that time was a bit similar to what we often call “loose beer”. Coke was packed in a large wooden barrel and placed in the bar. When the customer ordered, the bar owner poured a glass out of the large wooden barrel.
This kind of sales method seems bizarre today, but it was the most reasonable at the time – even today with extremely advanced technology, the cost of a Coke bottle is still more expensive than the Coke contained in it. If you bottled Coke at that time, its cost The price is bound to go up considerably, scaring away a group of customers who would have ordered it at the bar, which would be tantamount to commercial suicide. Because of this, carbonated drinks similar to Coca-Cola in that era were chosen to be placed in wooden barrels in bars.
However, the decision of Coca-Cola to choose bottled has made it go out of a new way. Although bottled Coke cannot be sold in bars, it has ushered in a larger market because of its easy portability. Coincidentally, during the same period, the U.S. retail industry began to upgrade from the original grocery store to a supermarket, and Coke was bought back home by citizens logically due to this “east wind”. Instead of shrinking the customer base, it greatly expanded.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States introduced the famous Prohibition Law, prohibiting citizens from going to bars to get drunk. Bars all over the United States have closed or moved underground, and those customers who go in and out of speakeasy bars think that it is illegal to come anyway, and simply get drunk, and naturally they rarely order non-alcoholic soft drinks. In this way, the carbonated beverage rivals competing with Coke on the same stage suddenly lost their traditional living space. At this time, if they want to follow Coke and enter the direction of bottling, they have lost their first move.
At this time, the Coca-Cola Company made another request that sounds a bit bizarre: the newly designed Coke bottle must be unique, and the buyer can recognize a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand even in the dark by touch alone. The debris on the ground can be identified as a bottle of Coca-Cola.
Why does Coca-Cola make this request? Or to get rid of those opponents who follow up.
At that time, refrigerators were not yet common in the United States, and carbonated beverages such as Coke were chilled in ice cubes. Consumers usually grabbed a bottle from the ice cube and paid for it. In this case, how to let consumers know that it is Coca-Cola is obviously very important.
This impossible task was finally completed, and in 1915, the famous curved bottle of Coca-Cola was designed. The bottle body of this kind of bottle looks particularly charming. Some people say that it is designed according to the shape of cocoa leaves and coke beans, but it is more popular to say that the designer saw his girlfriend look good in leggings and obtained it according to that curve. inspiration. The latter statement is likely to be closer to the truth, because in the following hundred years, Coca-Cola has made many changes to the scale of the arc on the Coke bottle, each time it is said to reflect the new aesthetic trend of the American female body in the era.
Of course, an unexpected benefit of the curved bottle is that the beverage in the curved bottle looks a lot more than the straight bottle at the same capacity. To this day, this very cute design is still influencing consumers’ choices – if you don’t believe me, go to the supermarket and look at the same two-liter bottle of carbonated drinks. Because of its curved bottle, Coca-Cola will always seem to have the most capacity. .
Raymond Lowe, a famous American industrial designer, once praised Coca-Cola’s curved bottle as “the most successful industrial design”. Such praise is not a lie. As a carbonated beverage with a relatively fixed taste, it is difficult for Coca-Cola to beat its competitors by quality alone, and it is even more difficult to achieve high recognition. However, high brand recognition is precisely what products in the industrial age need to pursue most, so they can only work on the outer packaging. From the century-old cultivation history of the Coca-Cola bottle, you can see how hard entrepreneurs are trying to seize the market.
