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Coca-Cola began advertising its products on clocks in 1893, when such novelty advertisements were increasingly common. Coke would distribute branded clocks to sellers who bought and sold at least 100 gallons of Coca-Cola syrup per year. The...
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Coca-Cola began advertising its products on clocks in 1893, when such novelty advertisements were increasingly common. Coke would distribute branded clocks to sellers who bought and sold at least 100 gallons of Coca-Cola syrup per year. The first Coca-Cola clocks were made by the Baird Clock Company of Plattsburgh, New York, and had big, round faces with Roman numerals. The first ones were generally blue rather than red, and they measured about two feet tall. Unlike the electric clocks that were to follow several decades later, they were key-wound. At $2.75 each, clocks were relatively expensive to produce, but Coca-Cola made the investment knowing that, because of their usefulness, advertising clocks would stay on display in a store long after posters or other items had been discarded. These early Coca-Cola clocks often bore slogans like “The Ideal Brain Tonic,” or “Delicious, Refreshing, Relieves Exhaustion.” Soon, however, simpler slogans like “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Delicious, Refreshing” became standard. Because these statements were more generic, they also helped prevent the clocks from becoming outdated or irrelevant. In 1900, Coca-Cola switched to schoolhouse clocks, which were manufactured by companies like Welch Manufacturing. These clocks had octagonal faces, were pendulum-driven, and featured ornate engravings on their wood cases. Five years later, schoolhouse clocks gave way to large, rectangular regulator clocks. These often had the same type of face as the schoolhouse clocks but had two panels on them—a top panel with the clock itself and a bottom panel with an illustration. One example, from 1911, has been nicknamed the “Gibson Girl” clock because its illustration of a girl in the bottom panel that resembles the artwork of the illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. In addition to these wall clocks, Coke distributed clocks meant to be displayed on the top of a store’s cash register. Around the same time, until about 1920, Coca-Cola also...
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