Ben Gilbert

It should be the formula.

It should be the marketing.

It should be the packaging.

They were already in this ballpark, but it was his idea that

wherever you are when you reach for a Coke, it should feel the same, it should taste the same, it should have the same temperature.

And so the spiritual thing that he does to sort of illustrate this is he goes to the bank in New York and says, we are repaying the loan, we are taking our formula, the canonical one-of-one formula, and we are moving it to our bank, the trust company bank in Atlanta, which would become SunTrust, and it would sit there for the next 86 years.

Yes.

And the reason it is there, they made this whole big parade of we're taking it out of the bank and we're putting it in World of Coca-Cola.

Theme park, for lack of a better phrase.

Yes.

That is a vault that is very meant to be gazed upon because when they did move it there about a decade and a half ago, they kind of realized...

For a long time, to many generations, we made a big deal of, we have this secret formula, and you need to know about it.

We're going to be really loud about it, but it's super secret, so you can't see it.

And that worked, and it really lived in the public's consciousness, and it had sort of fallen out.

It was an effort in 2011 to kind of shake the public, and especially the younger generations, and say, we are Coca-Cola, and we have the one secret formula, and we want to bring it back to your attention that we have something that is super secret and worth protecting.

And giant signs, right, that say Coca-Cola sold here or drink Coca-Cola or Coca-Cola always refreshing.

And someone told me in the research that the gas station owners absolutely loved this because, A, the signs told people, you can come get a Coke here, which was a value proposition for people.

But B, just like we're talking about, there's so much margin to go around being the retailer saying,

of soft drinks, especially at this time, that they were making more money on Coke than gas.

So of course you want this.