How Coca-Cola's Ruthless Business Tactics Created a Despicable Global Powerhouse

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/food/how-coca-colas-ruthless-business-tactics-created-despicable-global-powerhouse



Coca-Cola is not fascinating for what it is – colored sugar water with bubbles – but for what it represents. And that’s a point long known by the company’s marketers, with the exception of when they forgot it during the New Coke fiasco in the 1980s. Today, marketing students in business schools everywhere study that famous gaff.

Despite the decades-old slogan, “Delicious and Refreshing,” people do not drink Coca-Cola for the taste. They drink it because they associate it with positive things like friendship, fun, patriotism, and athleticism. Careful to market the drink to all people, everywhere, without alienating anyone, the ads are often vague. “Coke is It!” What is “it”? It’s whatever you want it to be, just as long as it makes you want to buy more Coke!

The book guides readers through the decades of marketing campaigns that built this image, most significantly during World War II, when Coca-Cola was made available to U.S. soldiers everywhere in the world, often at the government’s expense. When sales slumped, the answer was never changing the flagship product; it was a new ad campaign. Remind consumers that Coke = fun (or simpler times, or hope, or whatever feeling they crave) and they will drink more of it.

Because constant, never-ending growth is seen as essential, the other necessity is finding new channels to facilitate more Coke-drinking than ever before. Today, you can be 50 miles from nowhere in any country except Cuba and North Korea and if you crave an ice-cold Coca-Cola, you can get one. Even in places where few have clean drinking water or electricity, both needed to produce ice-cold Coke, some enterprising entrepreneur will have electricity and a cooler and plenty of Coke. The same cannot be said of nearly any other product.

[demwing]

1. Alternate title: "How Coke Sells Lots of Coke"

Btw, i only drink Coke because I prefer the taste.

[xchrom]

3. i make a fabulous coca cola ham.

but i also know their business practices suck.

[demwing]

6. That's why I read your thread

(...their business practices, not your ham) Coke is no saint. I was hoping for a vicious take down, lol

<<< (not Coke)

[cherokeeprogressive]

10. Same here plus it tastes so good with Wild Turkey. n/t

[dkf]

2. Why would you expect more from a company founded on selling drinks with cocaine?

[siligut]

11. My first thought

Coke used to contain cocaine and was first developed as a hangover cure. I believe it was probably pretty good as a hangover cure too.

[marmar]

4. I went to that World of Coca-Cola place once.......

...... The exhibits on the Central American death squads killing bottling plant employees who tried to unionize were conspicuously absent. Shocking, huh?

[xchrom]

5. !

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. Yep. Shocking! n/t

[pipoman]

7. Brilliant marketing/merchandising plan for over a century

has made coke advertising among the most sought after by collectors of all products. Beginning in the last decade of the 19th century there was an awakening in the marketing/merchandising world centered around inexpensive printing methods and a few genius people who adopted a new theory in marketing. The Simmons Hardware Company* and Coca Cola were the leaders in developing this new marketing and merchandising strategy still used to this day in one way or other by nearly every product marketing team..both became household names in a relatively short time. These strategies have been built upon over the decades, but the base is the same...make people associate good feelings with your product and your product will sell.

I see nothing sinister in this development and believe it was as much a part of advancement of civilization as indoor plumbing and electric lights...both of which were sold to skeptical consumers using these same principals. What Coke did with their massive earnings is a different subject all together..

*Simmons was the largest wholesale hardware company in the world for a few decades, and their flagship brand, Keen Kutter, was every bit as recognized as Coca Cola through the 1930's when a series of bad business decisions combined with the depression ruined the company..the name lived on, just not as well known through the 1960's..

This has been a subject (19th and early 20th century marketing/merchandising) I have studied for over 20 years as a hobby..

[gopiscrap]

8. I won't drink coke

it feels too strong for me.....I prefer Dr. Pepper

[geek tragedy]

12. This is the lamest criticism of a big corporation ever.

"Coca Cola vigorously promoted not only its product, but also the value of its brand."

No shit.