Visit to The World of Coke !

Half a Circle….. Full a Circle….. and The World of Coke!!

Cocacola…. The word always reminds me of 4 year old cute little boy….. whom I regard as my son….. one evening he came to me with this riddle…. “Tai… guess this one…. Half a Circle Full a Circle Half a Circle A, Half a Circle Full a Circle LA”…. After raking my gray cells for some time…. I gave up…. And kiddo burst out laughing. He thought Tai is so much elder to me and goes to college…. But she does not know the answer to such a simple riddle…. He was thrilled that he could beat me in one more thing, another being the Computer Game of Tetris. After he had a good laugh he told me the answer…. COCACOLA !

Gosh! I felt so stupid…. So stupid that I cant see things differently! I can’t think creatively. I saw COCACOLA as just another word… the idea of seeing the letters of the word as shapes never struck me when he asked me the riddle!

The kiddo turned out to be one of the brightest kids I know, meritorious through-out the academics, soon going to be an engineer.

Coming back to what I actually want to narrate….
Last Sunday I visited the World of Coke in Atlanta – the birth place of Coke. This 121 years old company has been a trademark of creativity and real marketing and advertising genius!

It’s just a soda, that they started selling 121 years ago. More than a century and quarter, the company has reached to millions of people across the globe. The principles driving the whole company – uniform taste, universal availability and “I forget the 3rd U”, and last but not the least “U” – the people, the company says.

The World of Coke in Atlanta showcases the company’s 121 year old history, its products world-wide, its associations with global events such as Olympics and how the product touches the lives of millions of people across the world. The place also features a mini theatre wherein the Coke product ads from various countries are screened continuously. When we peeked into the theatre, we watched our very own Indian ad about “Fanta” featuring Rani Mukherjee! Felt like coke is everywhere, and so is India J

You will see a real life bottling plant – which is engineered to bottle 20 bottles per minute – unlike the company’s world-wide bottling plants that produce 1200 bottles per minute. A technician explained us how difficult it was to build a plant which was 60 times slower than the actual plant; it takes a hell lot of re-engineering of the whole assembly line. The manufacturing and process industries just amaze me! People with genius have created wonders! And we the spectators get a free coke bottle produced right of that plant.

All in all the tour of the World of Coke was a journey into the history of the company told by the way of creative exhibits and historical artifacts, depicted by way of creative genius of Americas best marketing brains.

I bought couple of souvenirs to showcase of on refrigerator, to remind of me places I visited world over. Left the place completely refreshed by the World of Coke J

Thanda Matlab Cocacola !