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Published · transcript-backed

Ben Gilbert: belief

24 Nov 2025 Acquired Coca-Cola

“I think the idea is like, come on. We got to fight this. We can’t just be giving up our trademarks.”

— Ben Gilbert

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
belief
Recorded
24 Nov 2025
Publisher
Acquired
Episode
Coca-Cola

Transcript context

…Yes, that’s right. I think the idea is like, come on. We got to fight this. We can’t just be giving up our trademarks. But Woodruff, this is one of the few times where I feel like he put an idealistic approach aside and said, we got to be pragmatic here. We’ve got to settle with these guys. The result of this is that Pepsi becomes Coke’s first real legitimate competitor. By August, 1941, at 6–7 years later, colas that are not Coca-Cola have 14% of the US soft drink market share, the majority of which is Pepsi. It’s a major chink in the armor. Is basically 100% Coke before this happened, and Pepsi establishes a pretty meaningful foothold. On the one hand, this is a real bad thing for the Coca-Cola company. They went from having essentially a monopoly on the market, to letting a real legitimate competitor get established in the US. But a really, really good thing is also about to happen to the Coca-Cola company that makes the US market itself one of many, shall we say, and that is World War II.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.

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