That’s a Wrap on the Billboards

As we previously shared, our Billboards were live in Atlanta, and were up for a full month, coming down just recently, on Monday July 10th.

A HUGE Thank You to everyone who donated to make those a reality! We couldn’t have done it without your generous donations.

Now that the billboards are down, we wanted to share a little bit more information about how that event played out.

We launched the billboards on Monday, June 13th. At that time, we had one of our members go down to the two site locations and take photographs of them so we could promote them on social media and other channels.

On June 15th, we launched a national press release about the billboards to gain national coverage. In early July, we launched a second regional press release about the billboards to gain coverage in Georgia.

In addition to media coverage about the billboards (more on that below), we also know that Coca-Cola executives did read our press release–and we also sent them a letter with a formal request to speak with them about the billboards and our request to bring back TaB (we’re still awaiting a response.)

We learned a lot doing this event:

  • We learned how to raise funds from the TaB drinking community for a group project.
  • We learned how to engage in contracts with entities such as the outdoor advertising company and the press release firm.
  • We found out it’s a LOT of work coming up with the billboard designs, as well as working through the legal hurdles around what we were permitted to place on them (especially with a group of volunteers working on it who also have day jobs).
  • It’s expensive doing press releases, and we are still learning about the differences we get in coverage from paid media (press release) versus earned media (when a reporter just decides to write about us).

Media Coverage:

(this is as of July 14th)

287 news outlets did an EXACT Match placement of our press release (meaning they posted it word-for-word on their website).

Outlets included entities such as: Local stations (Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC), Newspapers, Online Media, etc. (see graphs below):

Release Views

To date, we’ve had over 3,000 direct views of the news release. This could be by general consumers or by members of the news media. These releases also help people find out about our efforts to save TaB when they are doing google searches online. The more articles and web publications that have an article (or press release) written about our efforts, the more likely it is to be picked up in search results–which points people directly to our website, the petition to sign, and the number at Coca-Cola to call.

Articles Written

In addition to the exact match placements, we have had at least two articles written about the billboards by journalists. It’s difficult for us to scour all of the internet to see where else we might show up, so if you find one, let us know!

PennLive.com

StupidDope

Continued Coverage

While we’re really excited about all of the coverage we received so far–we’re still trying to reach additional journalists! Even though our billboards are no longer up, we believe there’s quite a story to tell about a group of soda drinkers who care so much for their favorite soda, they’d raise funds to erect billboards in an effort to bring it back!

If you have any media contacts or ideas of who we should be talking to, let us know!

Next Up

Please stay tuned for some updates on what else we’ve been working on behind the scenes this summer, as well as a call for suggestions on our next group activity. We may not have TaB back yet, but we’re in this for the long haul, and we’re only getting started…

-SaveTaBSoda Committee

Our Billboard(s) are LIVE in Atlanta!

Summary

  • Thank YOU to everyone who donated—We have two billboards live with five rotating images up for 30 days!
  • Help Us!  Let’s use this momentum to Contact Coca-Cola every single day the billboards are up.  Call (800.GET.COKE) or E-mail Them using their contact form.
  • We’re going to need to raise funds again.  And we’ll be announcing our next event soon.

THANK YOU!

First, and most important—THANK YOU to every single person who donated to our fundraiser to help us make the billboards a reality.  With the donations we received, we were able to acquire two digital locations in Atlanta (a larger one on Luckie St & Ivan Allen Jr BLVD Intersection—facing Coca-Cola Headquarters and near World of Coca-Cola, and a smaller one on Piedmont Road & Dan Lane—a busy intersection with lots of traffic).  These digital billboards will rotate in 10 second intervals on the signs for the next 30 days (6/13-7/12).

The Campaign

Our billboards contain five different ads from us.  The larger billboard is targeting Coca-Cola directly (because it faces Coca-Cola).  The message to Coca-Cola is very simple and to the point.  Paraphrased, it’s:  We want to buy TaB again. Sincerely, us. 

The logo-less can (we were not permitted to use the TaB logo) helps to evoke the “missing” aspect of TaB.  That bright, striped, recognizable can really shows up well on these lighted billboards and grabs the attention of passersby right away.

The smaller billboards are also targeting Coca-Cola, but secondly, they are intended to interest other consumers in our cause—and drive them to our website where we’re collecting signatures and raising funds for the next activity.  We’re using a testimonial style billboard to help others see that TaB isn’t just an ordinary soda.  It’s something people will go WAY out of their way to make a part of their lives.

We hope you enjoy the billboard designs—below.

Press Release

We’ve issued a national press release about the committee and the billboards, in hopes that we’ll see some stories picked up about our efforts.  

How can You help?

While these billboards are up, we need every single person who ever wanted TaB back to contact Coca-Cola and let them know how much it means to them.   Call every day (800.GET.COKE).

  • Tell them about the billboards. 
  • Tell them if you donated your own money to the billboard campaign (because you couldn’t buy TaB). 
  • Make sure to politely request that they bring TaB back into production.  

Our committee continues to contact the Coca-Cola Company to make formal requests for TaB, and we’ve reached out to them directly regarding the billboards–to see if they’ll speak with us.

Remember—every single voice helps, and we can’t make any progress without all of YOU letting Coca-Cola know you want TaB back.

Additionally, we hope to see more signatures on the petition during this time of heightened awareness of our efforts.  Please continue to share the petition around—and if you see any articles online with comment sections discussing TaB—make sure you drop the link to the petition out there and ask people to sign it!  (https://www.change.org/savetabsoda)

Next Steps

The Committee spent the funds we raised for the billboard activity, so stay tuned for additional information soon about our upcoming efforts.   In the meantime, if you are willing to help us raise funds to help jumpstart our next activity, please visit our fundraising site.

Photos & Design Mockups of the billboard designs that rotate through them are below:

Help Us Build an Online Photo Archive

We are working on a new project starting in May, and we need your help.  We would like to build an online archive of photographs from TaB drinkers that shows how we’ve spent the past 59 years with TaB!  As we all know—TaB is more than just a beverage, to us.  Let’s show Coca-Cola (and other important stakeholders) how we made TaB a major part of our lives!

For those of you who have been following the SaveTaBSoda efforts for a while, you may remember last year when we collected stories and photographs from TaB drinkers to create a printed book that we sent to Coca-Cola stakeholders.  This new idea expands upon that—printed books were nice—but this new concept will allow us all to view the finished product!  And, as a bonus, it will be easier for all of us to share the completed archive around with important stakeholders when it’s in a digital form.

Please look through your own personal photos, and if you have one (or many) photos that you’d like to send us to be part of this archive, please upload them at the link below.

The only real “rules” are that you have to be the owner of the photograph and be willing to provide SaveTaBSoda permission to use the photo.  Anything TaB-related is fair game!

We hope this will be a fun final product that we can all enjoy—and will serve a dual purpose of helping to tell the story of TaB drinkers to others who are interested in helping our cause.  Plus—we’ll start sharing fun photos on our Instagram and Twitter account and more!

Some ideas for submissions:

  • You drinking TaB!
  • Family members drinking TaB!
  • TaB apparel
  • TaB collectibles and decor
  • TaB holiday items
  • TaB-themed food items (birthday cakes!)
  • TaB artwork or drawings
  • Anything else TaB-related you can think of!

Photos can be new; they can be old—we’d love a mixture of both!

IMPORTANT: This activity has ended. Uploads are no longer being accepted.

Let’s Spring Into Action

Thanks to everyone who participated in our “March Madness Cheering for TaB” event! We know you made many calls to Coca-Cola and sent many notes off to major retailers (like Albertson’s, Amazon, Costco, Walmart, Publix, and Hy-Vee).

In addition to your work, the SaveTaBSoda Committee also sent letters off to these major retailers from our nonprofit organization. And we heard back from a couple of them! Retailers place an emphasis on Customer Service, and if we can convince them to work with Coca-Cola to bring the product back, it might be a good angle for us to continue to pursue.

Action Items for this Spring

Those of us in the Committee will continue to work with the contacts we heard back from, but we need YOUR HELP too. We need you all to help show how important TaB is to you, to these retailers. Explain how you believe these companies would benefit from a TaB comeback (would you only shop there? Would you be a brand new customer? Would you tell all of your friends to shop there?) Let ’em know!

Please continue reaching out to these major retailers on behalf of TaB drinkers everywhere!

Albertson’sAmazonCostcoHy-VeePublixWal-Mart
Send Online Form
(select other)		Amazon Members Call (888)280-4331Send Online FormSend Online Form
Send Online Form
(select other)		Send Online Form (select company feedback & questions)
Retailer Contact Forms

And Finally, don’t forget to ALSO contact Coca-Cola. They are the ultimate decision-maker here: Contact Them Here or call 800.GET.COKE.

We’re going to continue to promote this “Spring into Action” event during the month of April and we’ll have a fun social media activity coming up in May.

Together, let’s #SaveTaBSoda!

March Madness

It’s March, and one of the biggest events this month will be the NCAA Basketball Tournament known as “March Madness.”

While TaB doesn’t have a lot to do with Basketball–one thing we have in common with the sport is the need for cheerleaders. We need all of you to be “Cheerleaders for TaB!”

The SaveTaBSoda Committee is working behind the scenes contacting companies (like grocery stores, retailers, and the like) as well as the independent bottlers–trying to find even one who is interested in helping us #SaveTaBSoda. If consumers can’t convince Coca-Cola, we’re hoping we can convince another company to help convince them on our behalf.

While we’re doing this–we need you–our TaB Cheerleaders–to keep up the energy and excitement around the TaB brand. We need to ensure that Coca-Cola is constantly hearing from consumers about how much WE LOVE TAB.

During the month of March, there are numerous ways you can participate. And we hope you’ll help us with all of them!!

(plenty of details below the graphic)

There are so many ways to help us be Cheerleaders for TaB!

1- Contacting Corporate

  • Call Coca-Cola at 800.GET.COKE. Ask for TaB to be stocked in stores again.
  • E-Mail Coca-Cola (select “Product Availability” as the topic)

2- Contacting Retailers

Contact one of the top grocery store/retail companies in the U.S. and ask them to carry TaB in their stores or online. After all, if they make it available online–that’s a national presence!

StoreContact Method
ALBERTSONS COS. INC.Send an Online Form
AMAZONIf you have an Amazon Account:
Webchat with them. Just search “Chat” in Amazon to find the feature. Or call customer Service: 1 (888)280-4331

Or

Send a Letter:
Amazon
410 Terry Ave N
Seattle, WA 98109

COSTCO WHOLESALE CORPORATIONProvide feedback about your nearest Warehouse
Or
Send a Letter:
Costco Wholesale
P.O. Box 34331
Seattle, WA 98124
HY-VEEFill out an online form or live chat on the Contact Us Page
WALMART INC.Use the Contact Us form to do a product request for TaB
THE KROGER CO.Send a Letter:
The Kroger Co
Customer Relations
1014 Vine Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-1100
PUBLIX SUPER MARKETS INC.1 (800) 242-1227 Press 6, then Press 8
If your store isn’t on the list–seek them out and let them know you want TaB back! Other stores you might want to reach out to: HEB, Wegmans, Food Lion, Save A Lot, IGA, Southeastern Grocers (Winn Dixie, Fresco, Harveys), Price Chopper, Shaws, Hanneford, Market Basket among others.

3- Flood Social Media with TaB

  • Make sure to tweet @CocaColaCo, @CocaCola, and use #SaveTaBSoda!
  • Tweet photos of TaB
  • Comment on Coca-Cola Twitter Posts
  • Reply to others with #SaveTaBSoda and link to our website
Twitter example of TaB tweets
Example of how you can engage with Coca-Cola on social media. Reply to their tweets with TaB love!! Not only does Coke see it, consumers do too!!

TaB Cheerleaders, all together now:

“Go TaB Go, Let’s Win!”

Committee Update

!Alert! Cheesy Post Ahead–but with an important message 🙂

We wanted to share just how dedicated we are to saving TaB Soda from the history books. The famous lyrics of Rick Astley say it best:

Never gonna give you up.  Never gonna let you down.  Never gonna run around and desert you.  Never gonna make you cry.  Never gonna say goodbye.  Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
....

Now that we all have that song stuck in our heads, here’s a little information about what the SaveTaBSoda Committee has been up to.

While we’re fundraising for billboards in Atlanta, we are also working behind the scenes to see if we can convince other businesses that TaB is a product that has a lot of potential. The SaveTaBSoda Committee is writing letters to many different organizations to try to convince them that if they could sell TaB–it would be a benefit to their business! We need them to Contact Coca-Cola to help us bring it back.

Top Grocer/Retailers in the U.S

We’re reaching out to some of the largest grocery store chains in the United States as well as Amazon–to see if we can convince them to work with Coca-Cola to bring TaB back into production so they can sell it and increase their customer base (among other benefits). You can help us with this. Have you written or called your favorite retailer to ask them to carry TaB? Please write or call them today! Seek out online retailers as well (a simple google search) and if they have TaB listed on their website but it’s out of stock–contact them to ask them to get more TaB!

Coca-Cola Bottlers

We’re contacting the main independent Coca-Cola bottlers in the United States (with a special focus on those who previously recently produced TaB) to see if we can find one or more who are willing to work with Coca-Cola to make a case for bringing TaB back. Our hope is that at least one of them has an interest in selling TaB if Coca-Cola will provide them the syrup. Have you contacted your local Coca-Cola bottler to ask them if they will carry TaB once again?!? Please do!

We’re In This for the Long Haul

We don’t know how long our efforts will take to make a difference, but we’re all very dedicated to get TaB back. As you all are well aware, TaB drinkers are a resilient bunch, we’re loyal to the brand, and we don’t give in easy.

Please stick with us as we continue to work to convince Coca-Cola that a different business decision on TaB could be a win-win for consumers and Coca-Cola alike! This may take us some time! While the TaB stockpiles may be dwindling–that should energize all of us to keep trying in any way we can, to let Coca-Cola know how much we care about the brand and how many more of us there could be if they advertised it and sold it once more.

♫ We’re never gonna give TaB up! ♫

Please stay tuned for the next #SaveTaBSoda activity we’ll be working on in March!

Fundraising Update

We’ve made SO MUCH progress on the fundraising efforts for the billboard campaign in Atlanta.

At the time of this post, we’ve raised $4,428 of our target of $5,000–for both the billboards and advertising the event. A sincere THANK YOU to every single one of you who have donated.

It appears that we are going to reach our target, but we need your help to make that final push to get us there! We’re so close!

Please Note: This fundraiser is currently closed.

What’s Next?

At this time we are engaging the outdoor advertising companies to work out the timing of the billboards (we need to determine a month when our selected locations will be available for use).

We are also finalizing the designs/ad copy. The final designs will be a surprise (we don’t want Coca-Cola to see them before they’re up)–but if you have any ideas, please let us know soon (contact us.)

It’s going to take us a bit of time to get the billboard event organized. In addition to putting the billboards up, we need time to reach out to news organizations–because we want this to be covered nationally to maximize the impact. Please be patient as we work through all of the logistics of this big event. We’ll keep you updated as we make progress. For now, help us get through that final fundraising push. Thanks everyone for all of your support!

#SaveTaBSoda Committee

❤️TOMORROW, LAST DAY of February Event❤️

We’re nearing our FINAL DAY (Monday, Valentine’s Day 2/14) of calling and e-mailing Coca-Cola to request TaB back. Please help us end this event strong by making one more round of phone calls (800.GET.COKE) and sending e-mails tomorrow! (Additional details below)

Please stay tuned for information about our next event and an update on our billboard fundraising efforts soon!

In honor of Valentine’s Day, February is our official “We Love TaB” month.

Last year at this time, we sent Valentines to Coca-Cola.  This February, we’re going to make a lot of noise by making phone calls and sending e-mails DAILY for a full week.

When?

We’ll start this coming Monday (2/7) and continue through Valentine’s Day (2/14)!

What?

Make Calls!

Please make at leat six (6) phone calls during this period–one for each day Coca-Cola corporate is open. Remember, every single call from a customer asking for TaB is documented and taken into consideration.

❤️800.GET.COKE❤️

Send E-Mails

In addition to making phone calls, make sure to send Coca-Cola e-mail messages. They have a simple contact us form to send an e-mail requesting TaB (choose Product Availability as the topic).

Send Coca-Cola an E-Mail

Oh..and don’t forget. We are raising funds for billboards in Atlanta! Donate if you are able.

❤️Half-Way Mark of Our February Event❤️

We’re halfway through our week of calling and e-mailing Coca-Cola to request TaB back. Please keep up your efforts in making a phone call each day, and sending them an e-mail. We’ll keep this up thru Valentine’s Day (Monday 2/14).

Thank you for all of your help!

Additional details below.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, February is our official “We Love TaB” month.

Last year at this time, we sent Valentines to Coca-Cola.  This February, we’re going to make a lot of noise by making phone calls and sending e-mails DAILY for a full week.

When?

We’ll start this coming Monday (2/7) and continue through Valentine’s Day (2/14)!

What?

Make Calls!

Please make at leat six (6) phone calls during this period–one for each day Coca-Cola corporate is open. Remember, every single call from a customer asking for TaB is documented and taken into consideration.

❤️800.GET.COKE❤️

Send E-Mails

In addition to making phone calls, make sure to send Coca-Cola e-mail messages. They have a simple contact us form to send an e-mail requesting TaB (choose Product Availability as the topic).

Send Coca-Cola an E-Mail

Oh..and don’t forget. We are raising funds for billboards in Atlanta! Donate if you are able.