How the rap industry shook up a flat soda brand.

Everyone has a dream. Even advertisers. If you’re a budding copywriter, chances are you dream of one day writing a campaign as attention-grabbing as Nike’s recent surprise spot featuring Colin Kaepernick. Another of those industry big dogs is Coca-Cola and its beverage empire, and every year scores of new, hungry graduates try to land jobs there.

But in 1991, during one of the company’s routine recruitment sessions, an MBA student named Darryl Cobbin turned heads when he told recruiters he wasn’t all that interested in the Coca-Cola account. No, Cobbin had his sights on one of the brand’s less-glamorous products: Sprite.

Why? Well, partly because of the challenge. At the time, Sprite was responsible for just three percent... Read More