Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: Did you know that cocaine was in coca cola until
Speaker 1: black folks started drinking? And then black folks turned around
Speaker 1: and saved PEPSI I didn't know. Maybe you didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Maybe you didn't didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't.
Speaker 1: John Pemberton a pharmacists in Atlanta. He invented coke, but
Speaker 1: that was actually his second drink. His first invention was
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, called French wine coca. It was
Speaker 1: really just a copycat of a French wine that had
Speaker 1: cocaine in it. In eighteen eighty five, right when the
Speaker 1: product was about to start poppington Atlanta outlawed alcohol sales,
Speaker 1: So that's when Pemberton went to work on a different
Speaker 1: drink that had the same medicinal effects, introducing coca cola.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty six. They started calling coca cola the
Speaker 1: intellectual beverage among well off whites. In eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: it was revealed that cocaine was in coca cola, So
Speaker 1: that's when the drinks start getting marketed as refreshing versus medicinal.
Speaker 1: Then they started the glass bottles in eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and that changed the game because now anybody can get
Speaker 1: Coca Cola if you got a nickel, black or white.
Speaker 1: And then white folk did not want black folk drinking
Speaker 1: that good Coca Cola. That was the intellectual beverage. So
Speaker 1: because Coca Cola had cocaine in it, white newspaper started
Speaker 1: reporting Negro cocaine fiends were raping white women and the
Speaker 1: police were powerless to stop him. By three, they took
Speaker 1: the cocaine out and added more sugar and caffeine. I
Speaker 1: didn't know none of this. Also didn't realize that Pepsi
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty was in the dirt trying to keep
Speaker 1: up with Coca Cola. See, Coca Cola had the six
Speaker 1: ounds bottles for a nickel. Pepsi went to the twelve
Speaker 1: ounce bottles for the nickel, but that didn't help him.
Speaker 1: Jeff made the drink look cheap. But then Pepsi got smart.
Speaker 1: PEPSI said, you know what, Cocacola, don't go over there
Speaker 1: to the hood. We should. PEPSI put together a negro
Speaker 1: markets department, y'all. In the nineteen forties and fifties to
Speaker 1: increased sales to blacks, and it worked like hell. The
Speaker 1: president of Pepsi at the time was Walter mac He
Speaker 1: put together a team of black marketers to promote sales
Speaker 1: in black communities. Only, instead of making black folk look
Speaker 1: goofy in the butt of jokes, Pepsi promoted a different
Speaker 1: image of black folk in his advertising. Had Duke Ellington
Speaker 1: on that joint. By the time the fifties was over,
Speaker 1: Pepsi sales increased dramatically. That was out selling coke in
Speaker 1: the black community by marginal three to one, and the
Speaker 1: drink not the narcotic, because they were probably moving that narcotic.
Speaker 1: The technique of selling to just black folks was so
Speaker 1: successful that it would come to be known as niche
Speaker 1: advertising as an approach for carving out a distinct place
Speaker 1: in the markets. It still used that today black folk, WHOA,
Speaker 1: he's so powerful. Now take that the school, work or
Speaker 1: church with you, because I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: You welcome Pepsi