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Coca-Cola Company

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The Coca-Cola Company, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is the world's largest soft-drink company. Besides the well known Coca-Cola and Coke brands, it also has Fanta, Sprite, Barq's, Minute Maid orange juice, POWERade, and Dasani water. [1]

Contents

Coca-Cola during World War II

John Coca created the company Coca-Cola. This drink is highly addictive and can ruin your life said Mrs.Jwesr when she drank some herself. Before and during World War II, Coca-Cola adopted an apparent policy of ignoring the practice of eugenics and anti-Semitism by Nazi Germany, according to a 2000 book by Mark Pendergrast. Several of Coke's top executives in Germany were prominent members of the National Socialist German Workers Party. When the United States entered World War II, Coke began to represent itself as a patriotic drink by providing free drinks for soldiers of the United States Army.[2]

The United States Army permitted Coca-Cola employees to enter the front lines as "Technical Officers" when in reality they rarely if ever came close to a real battle. Instead, they operated Coke's system of providing refreshments for soldiers, who welcomed the beverage as a reminder of home. As the Allies of World War II advanced, so did Coke, which took advantage of the situation by establishing new franchises in the newly occupied countries.[2] Coca-Cola set up bottling plants in several locations overseas to assure the drink's availability to soldiers, setting the stage for the company's post-war overseas expansion. The popularity of the drink exploded as American soldiers returned home from the war with a taste for the drink.[2]

Coca-Cola at the 2008 Olympics

At the 2008 Summer Olympics in China, Coca-Cola debuted its film "Environmental Champions" at the Beijing Olympics complex. The film profiles the "environmental achievements" of seven participants in the Olympic Torch Relay, including "the first American male to ski to the South Pole." Coke "plans to leverage the ... film beyond the Olympics by making it available to field communications teams throughout the world," according to O'Dwyer's. Coke also "presented each Olympian [with] a Coca-Cola t-shirt made with blended cotton and PET [an easily-recycled material] plastic bottles," and each Paralympian with "visors made with recycled PET." The Olympics events were part of Coke's efforts, supported by PR firm Manning, Selvage & Lee, to present itself as a "green" company. [3]

Coca-Cola in Colombia

Members and leaders of the Colombian union Sinaltrainal working at coca-cola bottling factories in Colombia found themselves increasingly threatened, intimidated, tortured and killed by paramilitary squads working in collusion with factory managers and the government. Unable to achieve decent working conditions under this growing threat, Sinaltrainal requested the United Steelworkers Union to file suit in America against Coca-Cola. On July 21, 2001, Sinaltrainal and five workers filed suit [case#01-03208-CIV] against Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola Colombia and the bottling companies Panamaco and Bebidas y Alimentos in the Southern Federal District of Florida Court. [1]

On March 31, 2003, US District Judge Jose E Martinez found enough evidence to continue the case under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act. The court found the Colombian government complicitous with paramilitary groups that headed the intimidation activities, giving "state action", which allows the international law claim to proceed. The court, however, dismissed charges against Coca-Cola Company or Coca-Cola Colombia, holding only the bottling companies accountable to the allegations. It should be noted the paramilitary groups working with the bottling companies had been designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department. [2][3]

Coca Cola in India

Stung by a series of controversies, in late 2003, the Indian subsidiary of Coca-Cola hired Perfect Relations to help rebuild its damaged reputation and sales in ten states. [4] The newly contracted PR specialists have so far successfully managed to play down anti-capitalist protests concerning the wider availability of 'Coca-Cola' in some areas, less affected by the new economy booms into south eastern Asia, than of clean drinking water. Corporate responsibility towards its workers, it seems, is not a top priority. According to a news report the contract involved handling "all external communications in addition to the regular marketing activities" as well as close cooperation with the company's advertising agency, McCann-Erickson India.

A Press Trust of India report cited Bobby Kewalramani stating, "in Coke, we have bagged one of the largest accounts in the history of PR in India. We have to help Coke ensure that its image as a market leader is consistent with reality."

One of the first initiatives of Coca-Cola was to establish an 'independent' external advisory board. At the conclusion of its first advisory board meeting in December 2003, Coca-Cola India announced that it had decided to establish an India Environment Council chaired by one of the advisory committee members, former chief justice of India B.N. Kirpal. [5] The establishment of the council was developed as a strategy to deflect media attention onto corporate social responsibility initiatives and away from controversies involving the company. [6]

Coca-Cola India President, Sanjiv Gupta told PR Week that Perfect Relations was appointed in October 2003 to assist with the formation of the council. According to PR Week the initiative follows media reports "about Coca-Cola India paying former Miss Universe and Thumbs Up (Coca-Cola India's local brand) brand endorser Sushmita Sen Rs 1.45 crore (US$315,000) to stay silent over an alleged sexual harassment case against its marketing head, Shripad Nadkarni."

According to PR Week story the company has stated that the settlement of the contract and unrelated to the allegations. "There seems to be continuity in negative reports, getting published in media here. So this is a very critical issue. And hence such community-led initiatives are important in building public opinion," PR Week cited an anonymous source stating.

In August 2003, the Centre for Science and Environment had announced that a dozen drinks, produced by both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, contained unacceptably high levels of pesticides. However, if the formation of the advisory committee was designed to deflect attention, it was of little help when two days after its first meeting the Kerala high court ordered the company to stop extracting groundwater for its bottling plant near Plachimada village. The ruling followed a 608 day long protest by local villagers who complained the water extraction by Coca-Cola was so great it was drying their rice paddies out and killing their coconut palms. [7][8]

Countering criticism over rights abuses

After students at two Canadian universities, McMaster and the University of Guelph, voted down campus exclusivity deals with Coca-Cola, "the world's largest soft-drink company has launched a counter-offensive in hopes of heading off further boycotts." In December 2005, Coke reps visited McMaster and the University of British Columbia. Coke PR coordinator Kerry Kerr stressed that "these boycotts are actually affecting workers in the local area" and said allegations that the company is complicit in human rights violations in Colombia are false. [9]

Coke's PR manager in Colombia, Pablo Largacha Escallon, also took part in the Canadian tour. "There is a humanitarian crisis in Colombia, but [student activists] have made it a Coca-Cola-centric thing when it's a Colombia-centric thing," he said. Coke has also "recently hired a labour-relations director and plans to issue a human-rights policy next year." [10]

As of December 2005, 20 North American campuses were "Coke free," but "hundreds more could follow suit soon in England," reported Associated Press. [11] In early 2007, Britain's Manchester University banned Coke from its campus, "because of its behavior in Colombia, Turkey and India. ... Students are now expected to call for the National Union of Students to instruct its commercial arm NUS Services to end its supply contract with Coke at its national conference later this month." [12]

Marketing to Children

Coca-Cola insists that it does not market its products to children under age 12, announcing in 2003: "In keeping with a policy that has been in place for more than half a century, the Coca-Cola Company and its local bottling partners do not aim or direct any marketing activity from any source to children under the age of twelve."[4]

While "no advertising to kids under twelve" may mean that Coke doesn't advertise on cartoons, it also includes a huge exception for shows with mixed audiences, those viewed by children and adults. Coke exploits this loophole through product placement. On American Idol, the top-rated program among children aged two to eleven, and the show for which Coke is the top sponsor, the Coke logo is emblazoned all over the set. Coke readily celebrates the show's "universal appeal," ranging from kids to older adults.[5]

Coke also claims not to market Coke-branded toys to kids, saying that clothing and toys fall under the same guidelines as television. Yet Coke-branded toys, including checker sets and cars, are aimed at children as young as four. Coke claims that as long as there are no commercials for these products, children are not being marketed to.[6]

Coke in Schools

Coke, national and regional soft drink associations, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and other business groups have undermined school nutrition policies with lobbying tactics all over the nation.

Kentucky

After three previously unsuccessful attempts to improve the nutritional content of school vending machines, the Kentucky legislature finally passed a bill in March 2005 that removed all soda from elementary schools. Before the bill was passed, Kentucky already required that vending machines remain off until 30 minutes after the last lunch period but the rule was not enforced. And a survey of Kentucky schools found that 44% of elementary schools had vending machines despite Coke's written policy not to sell soda to elementary schools. The bill passed in 2005 was a compromise offered by Coke--allowing schools to continue to sell soda in middle and high schools was the only way the bill would pass. Coke even objected to the phrase "healthy beverages" to replace soda, worried about the implications for its reputation. Coke said they could live with the ban in elementary schools only if the bill did not say "healthy;" they finally agreed on "school-day approved." Dietitian Carolyn Dennis, chair of the Kentucky Action for Healthy Kids Task Force that fought Coke on the soda policy, found that many of the legislators accepted money from the soft drink industry so were unlikely to be on the side of the nutritionists.[7]

Connecticut

Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell vetoed what would have been the nation's strongest school-based nutrition law in June 2005, a bill that would have allowed only water, juice, and milk to be sold during the school day, K-12. In 2004, advocates had attempted to set nutrition guidelines on food and beverages, but lobbying by Coke and PepsiCo gutted the law. Coke hired Patrick Sullivan of Sullivan & LeShane to lobby on its behalf. The political struggle included an eight-hour House debate in which lawmakers engaged in stall tactics and delayed the process by adding unrelated amendments. Coke lobbyists also shared data regarding school income from soda sales with lawmakers behind closed doors so that nutrition advocates could not refute the information. Coke also delivered a well-stocked cooler to the Democratic caucus room just before the House was expected to vote on the bill.

The bill, despite an impressive array of supporters, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, as well as a survey showing that 70% of Connecticut residents favored the bill, was too much for the governor to sign. Governor Rell argued that nutrition decisions should be made on the local level, despite the fact that many school policies are made at the state and national level. Governor Rell failed to mention that the cofounder of Coke's lobby firm, Patricia LeShane, had served as the governor's campaign advisor.[8]

Countering criticism over obesity

In March 2004, Coca-Cola announced that it was creating the Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness. According to PR Week the institute is to support nutrition research, education, and outreach. The outreach activities, PR Week wrote, will be directed to "health professionals and consumers about nutrition, physical activity, and health maintenance issues." [13] Education, as the thinking by food companies goes, "empowers" people to make the right product choices, writes Michele Simon in her book Appetite for Profit, but is really a thinly veiled jab at nutrition advocates who supposedly want to take away the rights of consumers to freely decide which foods are best for them. Food companies don't mean any education, though, but rather the kind they provide so that they can control the information people need to make dietary decisions.[9]

In November 2004, PR Week reported that Coca-Cola GB and its bottling arm Coca-Cola Enterprises have combined their public affairs accounts and are seeking proposals from PR companies to include "reputation issues surrounding obesity". The companies current agencies are Lexington Communications, Burson-Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe. [14]

In January 2005 PR Week reported that Weber Shandwick had won the £350,000 account. Weber Shandwick senior vice-chairman David Yelland, the former editor of the Sun, has been designated Coke Great Britain's ‘chief media officer’ with the job of "rebuilding relations with the media, after last year’s Dasani fiasco." Weber Shandwick executive Colin Byrne will lead the team handling the account.[15]

In July 2005 PR Week reported that "Coca-Cola will work with Weber Shandwick this fall to promote its new, seemingly selfless "Live It!" children's fitness campaign in schools across the country." The PR firm will "focus on generating local publicity for schools that participate in the week-long program." [16] Coke lavished $4 million on the program in the fall of 2005, providing materials for 8,500 public middle schools, including videos of famous sports figures like Lance Armstrong that encouraged children to be active.[10] The plan offered some nutrition tips, but made no mention of beverage consumption, drawing attention away from the unhealthy beverages they also peddle in these same schools.[11]

Kirsten Witt, Coke's "nutrition communication manager," said the $4 million Live It campaign would not address childhood obesity or encourage students to drink Coke, adding that "the company's logo will not appear on Live It materials." In addition to PR and marketing, Coke is paying for campaign "posters, pedometers, and nutrition education materials along with prizes to offer children who meet the program's exercise goal of walking 10,000 steps in a week." For cash-strapped schools, the prospect of donated educational materials is irresistible. In other sugary news, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to require labels on sodas warning about "obesity, tooth decay and diabetes." [17]

Industry Sponsored Research

In September 2004, the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (JNEB), the official journal of the Society for Nutrition Education published an article titled, "Soft Drinks, Childhood Overweight and the Role of Nutrition Educators: Let's Base Our Solutions on Reality and Sound Science,"[12] authored by Liz Marr, a dietitian and partner in a consulting firm, Marr Barr Communications, whose clients include Coke, which sponsored Marr's research: a fact that the journal did disclose. This fact, however, did little to deter Coke from using Marr's bought-and-paid for conclusions to defend its products and practices.

The Marr article was prominently displayed at Coke's annual shareholder meeting in April 2005. Coke CEO E. Neville Isdell referred to the article to defend the company's marketing practices without mentioning that his own company had funded the article.[13] Isdell was especially eager to play up Marr's attempt to dismiss the myth that "soft drink companies market to young children." In her article, Marr insisted that "for nearly fifty years, the Coca-Cola Company has adhered to a policy not to market soft drinks to children under the age of twelve years. Recently, the company expanded that policy to apply to all of its beverages, including juices, sports drinks, and water."[14]

Josh Golin of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, who had attended that shareholder meeting, wrote a letter to the editors of JNEB citing numerous examples of how Coke markets to children under age twelve. His examples included product placement on television shows and branded checker sets. He also questioned the journal's complicity in bolstering Coke's position: "In short, to dispel the "myth" that soft drink companies market to young children, Marr merely parrots Coca-Cola's false claims about its own marketing practices. But when Coca-Cola makes these claims, some people, at least, may recognize that these are the self-serving words of a company desperately trying to maintain its access to children. When Marr repeats Coke's lies, she speaks with the authority of both her own expertise and the prestigious Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior."[15]

"The zero movement"

The Zero Movement is an astroturf campaign by Coke to sell a new sugar-free drink called "coca cola zero" in Australia. The campaign has involved viral marketing strategies, including buying billboards and the backs of magazines for ads apparently by "The Zero Movement", as well as putting up posters in public places [18]. There is also a website which includes a manifesto. An alternative, critical site calling itself The Zero Coke Movement describes the campaign:

"They call themselves "the zero movement", but what are they?
They're a bunch of advertising wankers pretending to be a grass-roots movement.
They're spending Coca-Cola's money to try to get you interested in drinking a product called 'Coca-Cola Zero'." [19]

Coca-Cola ceases funding for animal tests

Coca-cola announced it would no longer be funding animal testing on May 31, 2007. The announcement came days after its rival, PepsiCo; made a similar announcement on May 27th. According to the company's official statement to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA):

"Coke does not conduct animal tests and does not directly fund animal tests on its beverages, and is asking its partners and research organizations to use alternatives to animal testing."

PETA's campaign aimed at Coke and PepsiCo lasted approximately one year.[16]

Political contributions

Barclay T. Resler, Vice President Government Relations for Coca-Cola, is a Bush Ranger having raised at least $200,000 for Bush in the 2004 presidential election. [17]

Coca-Cola political action committees (PACs) gave $415,150 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election cycle - 37% to Democrats, 61% to Republicans, and 2% to third party candidates. [18]

Lobbying and public relations

In September 2008, Coke hired the Dewey Square Group firm, "for communications work regarding climate change, trade and assorted industry issues." The firm's "Joel Johnson (ex-chief of staff to Sen. Howard Metzenbaum and executive director of the House Democratic Study Group), Melanie Nathanson (former legislative policy analyst to Sen. Bob Graham), Joyce Brayboy (ex-chief of staff to Rep Melvin Watt) and James Kimberly (one-time special assistant to Sen. Alan Cranston)" work on the Coke account. [19]

The company spent $1,060,000 for lobbying in 2006. Of this total, $510,000 went to outside lobbying firms. (Corporations do their lobbying using in-house lobbyists as well as using lobbying firms). Two of the firms were Troutman Sanders and BKSH & Associates. [20]

Personnel

Key executives and 2006 pay: [21]

Selected Board members: [22]

Other:

Contact information

1 Coca-Cola Plaza
Atlanta, GA 30313-2499
Phone: (404 676-2121
Web: http://www.cocacola.com

Articles and resources

SourceWatch articles

References

  1. ↑ Coca-Cola Profile, Hoovers, accessed August 2007.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Mark Pendergrast (2000). For God, Country and Coca-Cola. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-05468-4.
  3. ↑ "MS&L Carries 'Green' Torch for Coke," O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), August 20, 2008.
  4. ↑ Sherri Day "Coke Moves with Caution to Remain in Schools" New York Times (September 30, 2003); Michele Simon Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back(Nation Books, 2006), pg 37
  5. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 122
  6. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 123
  7. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 230
  8. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 231-233
  9. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back (Nation Books, 2006), pgs. 36-37
  10. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 37
  11. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 37
  12. ↑ Liz Marr "Soft Drinks, Childhood Overweight and the Role of Nutrition Educators: Let's Base Our Solutions on Reality and Sound Science" Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 2004 Sep-Oct;36(5):258-65.
  13. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 170
  14. ↑ Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 170
  15. ↑ Josh Golin letter quoted in Michele Simon Appetite for Profit pg 170
  16. ↑ Coca-Cola stops funding animal testing: PETA , Reuters, New York, May 2007.
  17. ↑ Bush Ranger Barclay T. Resler, Texans for Public Justice, accessed August 2007.
  18. ↑ "Political Action Committees", Open Secrets.
  19. ↑ "Coke Grabs Glover Park," O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), September 22, 2008.
  20. ↑ Coca-Cola lobbying expenses, Open Secrets.
  21. ↑ Coca-Cola Key Executives, Yahoo Finance, accessed October 2007.
  22. ↑ Board of Directors, Coca-Cola, accessed August 2007.

External resources

  • Visit India Resource Center for in depth information regarding Coca-Cola in India
  • Visit Killer Coke for in depth information regarding Coca-Cola in Colombia
  • Visit the Coca-Cola entry at Knowmore.org for an in depth discussion of Coke's corporate abuses.

External articles

See Coca-Cola Company: External articles

Critical Books

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