Motion Picture Herald (1954)

THEATRE SALES GEORGE SCHUTZ, Director CARL R. MOS, Associate Editor £e0 brink Promotion toith Available 7 ooU 1^^ O better demonstration is needed of the value of consistent, diversified, dynamic merchandising in beverage sales promotion than the career of the Coca-Cola Company. Discussed here are devices which they have developed through long experience for retailers’ promotion. the secret of parlaying a batch of brown, pleasant tasting syrup into a multi-million-dollar, world-wide enterprise can be revealed in one word — merchandising. It started back in 1886, when Dr. John S. Pemberton, an impecunious Confederate veteran of Atlanta with a bent for invention, cooked up a mixture in an iron pot in his backyard. He liked the flavor, but lacked a name for the liquid until a friend Refreshment stand of the Bankhead drive-in, Atlanta, ing materials. The exterior ledge sign (lower view) The upper view shows interior use of the Coca-Cola suggested “Coca-Cola.” Doc Pemberton took a jug of his syrup to the one soda fountain in town (operating only during the summer) and — this is important — also carried a small, oilcloth sign reading CocaCola to advertise it at the point-of-sale. Moreover, in his first year in business, the inventor sold 25 gallons of syrup for $50, but spent $46 of that for advertising. showing the use of various Coca-Cola merchandiscombines drink with other refreshment exploitation, clock. That tradition, begun 68 years ago, of being willing to spend money to get money, has been an integral part of Coca-Cola policy ever since. Stockholders, among others, know how it has paid off. Today, according to Charles L. Okun, Coca-Cola’s special theatre representative, theatre refreshment stand operators have available to them at no cost many point-of BETTER REFRESHMENT MERCHANDISING l-R