Jolly Cola

Jolly Cola is an original Danish soft drink dating back to 1959. Jolly Cola is now produced by the Danish brewery ‘Vestfyen’, which also produces Jolly Light, the sports drink Jolly Time and Jolly Orange. Up until the 1980s, Jolly Cola had a market share of about 40% of the Danish cola market. This was extraordinary, as Denmark is one of a few countries in the world, where another cola than the original Coca Cola has had a larger market share. Jolly Cola is probably most famous for its slogan “Say Jolly to your cola!”, but on its 50th birthday, this slogan was changed into “Free your taste”.

History

Following WW2, many countries in the world viewed Coca-Cola as synonymous with the US and an American life-style, and as the US developed and increased its influence on society, so did Coca-Cola. In the meantime, the Danish population still had to wait until 1959, before they could buy a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola had been marketed with moderate success from the middle of the 1930s, but then came a war, followed by rationing of sugar and finally a special tax on cola, which made the soft drink just as expensive as a beer, and therefore kept it out of the Danish market. The taxation came as a result of skilled lobbyism, carried out by breweries and producers of mineral water – and it worked as intended.