AUTHORS SOLD ON SODA: LITERARY MENTIONS 1886-2008
Sprite – ‘I am a little world made cunningly’
Coke’s second-largest brand Sprite has been ‘green’ since its 1961 debut to compete with 7UP but did a much-vaunted 1968 packaging revamp pay dividends for the firm in terms of literary elites writing in English?
Not really. Although it became the lemon-lime soda market leader in 1978, the principal pick-up in mentions among scribblers occured in 1990, when the brand got Heavy D & The Boyz on board…
Quote: “I am a little world made cunningly, Of elements, and an angelic sprite.” Oops! That’s English poet John Donne (1572-1631), and clearly our dataset here runs the risk of confusing the brand with the term - beloved in fiction - of nimble elflike creatures associated with water.
