Soda sales are down. Diet soda sales are down. Major athletes are choosing to endorse milk and water, instead of taking an easy soda paycheck. Someone in Coca-Cola headquarters seemingly thinks they have a salve for soda’s downfall in a new typeface called TCCC Unity, which “encapsulates elements from Coca-Cola’s past and its American Modernist heritage.” Because when you think “American modernist,” you think Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, and a polar bear sipping on a Coca-Cola.
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TCCC stands for “The Coca-Cola Company” and “unity” stands for, I guess, the idea that this one font can unify much of Coca-Cola’s messaging, but also hints at Coca-Cola’s long-standing advertising narrative: That fizzy corn syrup has the power of unifying the world.
[Screenshot: Coca-Cola]Coke is far from alone in focusing on typography as a way to undergird a renewed marketing push. As It’s Nice That points out, Coca-Cola’s move comes after fellow giant companies like IBM and YouTube have released custom fonts of their own. For a company that spends over $4 billion a year in global advertising to own 3% of the consumed beverage market worldwide, a well-built custom font makes it easier to spin up quick advertising campaigns. Plus, it hides subtle branding right inside the lettering itself: “Geometric flair and circularity drawn from the archive form the basis of the Latin script,” the presentation explains. The classic curves of Coca-Cola branding have been translated to the glyphs, like a teardrop that sits in the small “a” and the Coca-Cola hyphen making its way into the lowercase “t.” Beyond those subconscious nods, the typeface gives the company a means to type every word in a Coca-Cola shape for the first time in the company’s history. I get it!
[Screenshot: Coca-Cola]But don’t lose the forest in the trees. Coca-Cola continues to operate under the mindset that its sinking soda ship is a brand problem rather than a product problem. It believes a green can of Coke will exude feelings of longevity, and that self-referential nostalgia will be enough to re-anchor it in the hearts of consumers, if presented again, and again, and again. These are the sentiments of VPs who don’t realize that the world has changed.
[Screenshot: Coca-Cola]People have extraordinary concerns about what they put into their bodies today, so much so that they will consume a Doritos Locos taco while drinking water. Anyone who thinks that products don’t need to adapt to survive should take a lesson from the U.S. auto industry. And anyone who thinks that good ‘ole days of marketing will save a product that likely kills people would do well to remember that Betty Draper died of lung cancer after smoking all those Lucky Strikes, and Don likely followed. As a 2015 study in a journal run by the American Heart Association put it, “Sugar-sweetened beverages, are a single, modifiable component of diet, that can impact preventable death/disability in adults in high, middle, and low-income countries, indicating an urgent need for strong global prevention programs.” It claimed 184,000 people died a year due to these drinks.
A “modern” typeface is not a new idea–whether or not Atlanta’s modern design museum puts its stamp on the project. No, it’s time that Coca-Cola rethinks its core convictions, and what it can do with a global distribution network other than sell more soda.
