Coke's Quest for Cool

Five hip global design firms are creating new bottles to revive cola's fading image

A multicolor prototype bottle called Love Being is hardly the kind of packaging you would expect from straitlaced Coca-Cola. But with soda sales sagging, the company is showing some new verve, assembling an international team of marketing specialists to create what it hopes will become the shiny embodiment of liquid cool. Coke is introducing a mod series of bottles called M5 to try to perk up its 119-year-old cola while launching some slick new drinks to recharge a business that has been slowly losing momentum.

Since 1999 the throw weight of conventional advertising has been ineffective at stopping a steady slide...

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