The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company enters Andy Warhol’s diary as a brand encountered through performance and media attention. A Diet Coke commercial placed Warhol among beauty-pageant alumni on a promotional float; years later, news coverage of Coca-Cola’s formula change caught his attention as a conspicuous public spectacle.

Celebrity advertising

For the Diet Coke commercial, Warhol was taken downtown to a float accompanied by about eight former Miss Americas or Miss Universes. He wore a Stephen Sprouse jacket, waited in a private mobile trailer, and watched as one of the swimsuit-clad women asked where the crew’s “talent” was, apparently not recognizing him. On the float, surrounded by pansies, Warhol’s role was to say “Diet Coke” and drink it—his first taste of the product. The scene linked the brand to celebrity, glamour, and a deliberately staged promotional setting, while the failure to recognize Warhol gave the performance an unexpected comic edge.

Coca-Cola in the news

On April 24, 1985, Warhol noted that Coca-Cola was changing its formula and questioned the decision, reasoning that the company could have introduced a new product without changing Coke itself. He also observed that television news programs were enthusiastically covering the change, showing people conducting taste tests. In this account, the product’s alteration mattered not only as a corporate choice but as a ready-made media event, with consumers’ reactions turned into television stories.

Brand, image, and public attention

The diary preserves two different forms of visibility for the company: Diet Coke appears within a commercial built around Warhol’s recognizable public image, while the formula change makes Coca-Cola itself the focus of news coverage and taste-testing. In the first instance, Warhol participates in the advertisement but is not necessarily recognized by everyone on set; in the second, the brand’s familiar product becomes the subject of widespread discussion. The contrast makes the company present in the diary both as an advertiser using celebrity and as a public-facing brand whose decisions attract scrutiny.