Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Soda Sponsorship Battle Royale

Are you a Pepsi-Cola fan, and wondered why Disney chose Coke as a sponsor over Pepsi? Actually, back during the first two weeks of Walt Disney World's operation, the Pepsi-Cola Co. was in fact the sponsor. On the second weekend of WDW being open, they ran out of soda. So Disney contacted the Pepsi-Cola offices and tried to place an order for more soft drinks to be delivered as soon as possible. Well the person in charge at Pepsi said that because it was the weekend, they wouldn't be able to ship anything until the following Monday.

So then Disney contacted The Coca-Cola Co. The person in charge at Coke gave the same information that due to the weekend, all the truck divers were at home. However, this person decide to go above and beyond what the Pepsi-Cola guy was willing to do. The Coke guy actually called all the drivers at home, and got them to ship all the soda the next day. So after that, Disney signed a multi-million dollar contract with Coke. Needless to say, the guy in charge at Pepsi got fired.

2 comments:

Daniel said...

interesting! where did you find out about this??

Blixzit said...

My father heard about it from a manager who has worked at WDW since it opened back in the day.

The World for One