By the early 1990s, most of Coke’s drinks across the US were being sold in disposable cans and PET bottles. Returnable glass made up less than 1 percent of what it sold in the US. Yet the company still wanted to hang on to the wholesome image evoked by its contour glass bottle.
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Coca-Cola’s advertising sought to evoke nostalgia, and for this the company used imagery of the old hobble-skirt glass bottle, often ice-cold with beads of condensation dripping down it. It had used the distinctive bottle since 1916. Also called the “Mae West” bottle after the American actress’s famously curvaceous figure, the shape was arguably the most recognized corporate symbol in the world. The company’s CEO, Doug Ivester, was convinced that Coke needed to keep the contour bottle high in the public’s imagination.
Hailing from New Holland—a small village in Georgia built for cotton mill workers—Ivester had started out life with modest ambitions. As a young teenager, he had worked the cash register and carried bags for customers at the Kroger store in Gainesville. He had longed to buy a swanky car like the 1964 Pontiac GTO driven by a regular customer. The man told Ivester that he was a certified public accountant. That car spurred the future Coke CEO to get an accounting degree.
“The bridge from growing up in that modest environment to having what I considered to be a good income-producing job was a CPA,” Ivester says. “I knew some people who had done it. They were successful and happy, they had good lives and didn’t need to be multimillionaires.” Ivester spent a decade at an accounting firm, Ernst and Ernst, where much of his time was taken up by Coke, his main client.
In 1979, he joined the drinks giant’s auditing department, putting in the same long hours he had at Ernst. His hard work paid off; six years later, at the age of 37, he became Coke’s chief financial officer. Then, in 1989, the company’s Cuba-born CEO Roberto Goizueta appointed Ivester as Coke’s head of Europe. His time abroad was short-lived. While Ivester was still apartment hunting during his first year in Europe, Coke’s US president, Ira Herbert, started having heart problems. One day, Goizueta phoned Ivester in his hotel room to say Herbert was soon to retire. “I need you back here to take Ike’s place,” Goizueta told him.
Soon after returning to Coke headquarters in Atlanta, Ivester made it his mission to renew Coke’s focus on the contour bottle, convinced it would help sales. While the company was doing brisk business overseas, growth at home was sluggish.
“I was concerned about the loss of brand imagery,” Ivester says. “I felt the contour bottle was a major conveyor of image and quality. It conveyed heritage and all the right things.”
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