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May 20, 2013
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For God, Country, and Coca-Cola
by Mark Pendergast is the definitive history of the product so many see
as a symbol of America itself. This impressive tome – recently released
as a third edition with added new material – is not a critique of
Coca-Cola, nor is it a fan’s tribute, as Pendergast reveals things the
Coca-Cola Company doesn’t want you to know. (Yes, it used to contain
cocaine.) He even reveals the drink’s original secret formula (which is
less exciting than you might think).
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.
The New Coke failure punctuates this strange phenomenon –
that the world loves and guzzles an unhealthy beverage, but not for its
good taste. Pepsi showed that in blind taste tests, more people prefer
Pepsi over Coke. New Coke was tastier than both Coke and Pepsi in blind
taste tests. Surely consumers would love it. Except, they didn’t. They
wanted fun, hope, patriotism, and everything else they associated with
good, old-fashioned Coca-Cola, not some new, better-tasting concoction.
Readers
seeking the dirt on Coca-Cola’s sordid past with Columbian
paramilitaries and Guatemalan death squads will find these episodes
covered briefly in this book. But the completeness of the company’s
history in this book paints a bigger picture, and Coca-Cola’s tangles
with death squads fit in as just one piece.
This is a company
devoted to, above all else, making as much money as possible and selling
as much Coca-Cola as possible. Period. Nazis get thirsty, too, you
know. In almost every case, the company tried to please everyone and
sell to everyone, without taking sides, unless it had no choice.
It’s
no good that Coca-Cola did business with a Guatemalan bottler who
allegedly hired death squads to murder employees trying to unionize. But
that is all part of a larger pattern, a larger scandal – although
there’s no conspiracy at all. The drive to increase profits and sales
and market share at all cost is the company’s story, plain and simple.
It took us from a 6.5-ounce drink only available at soda fountains to
one available everywhere in sizes as large as 64 ounces.
Coca-Cola
told us it wanted to teach the world to sing, but it’s far more likely
it is giving the world diabetes. Today, a small Coke at McDonalds is 16
ounces. Pendergast, ever the balanced journalist presenting both sides,
fails to definitely state that Coca-Cola is unhealthy. He generously
points out that Coca-Cola creates jobs and donates to charity, even
though he notes the company’s policy of “strategic philanthropy” – i.e.
using “charitable” donations to gain access to valuable markets,
particularly children.
The book is a long and somewhat exhausting
read, but it’s also a captivating history of the development of
America’s consumer culture (and terrible dietary habits) and it contains
fascinating profiles of the men (yes, mostly men) behind the company,
making readers wonder what a psychologist might have to say about these
often tyrannical, driven workaholics.
Here are some answers Pendergast gave about his book and the company he wrote about.
Jill Richardson: Why did you choose the title For God, Country, and Coca-Cola?
Mark
Pendergast: Coca-Cola has been a kind of religion to many people,
including the inventor, John Pemberton, who died two years after he came
up with it, and Asa Candler, who took it over and used to lead the
singing of "Onward Christian Soldiers" at his sales meetings.
These
were days when the drink was under attack for having cocaine in it and
even afterwards for its caffeine content. So they felt like early
Christian martyrs in a way, fighting for a just cause. Candler called
Coca-Cola "a boon to mankind." Coke employees have always joked that
they have Coca-Cola syrup flowing in their veins.
The drink has
also become a kind of religion for consumers, a symbol of the American
way of life as well. During World War II the drink was deemed an
"essential morale booster" for the troops, and it was served in lieu of
communion wine during the Battle of the Bulge. When New Coke was
introduced in 1985, people wrote anguished letters as if they had killed
God. Here is an actual letter I quoted in the book: "There are only two
things in my life: God and Coca-Cola. Now you have taken one of those
things away from me." I could go on....
JR: Can you
explain Coca-Cola's relationship with the two ingredients in its name,
coca and kola nuts? How much cocaine was initially in the product and
when was it removed?
MP: Coca-Cola was named for its two
principal drug ingredients. Coca leaf from Peru contained cocaine. Kola
nut from Ghana contained caffeine. Original Coca-Cola had a very small
amount of cocaine in a six-ounce drink, about 4.3 milligrams. The
company took out all but a minuscule amount of cocaine in 1903 and the
final amount in 1928.
JR: You imply in the book that it's
attempted to sugarcoat (no pun intended) this part of its past, saying
at some points that the product never contained cocaine. Is that true?
Can you elaborate?
MP: Every time I go to the World of
Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, I ask the guides if Coca-Cola ever
contained cocaine. They assure me that it did not. The official company
line seems to be that Coca-Cola never contained
added cocaine
-- i.e., they didn't add white powdered cocaine, which is true. But it
did contain fluid extract of coca leaf, which contains cocaine. For
years, the company line has also been that the name "Coca-Cola" is just a
"euphonious combination of words" -- i.e., it sounds nice. True, but
the drink was also named for its two principal drug sources.
JR:
How did Coca-Cola use World War II to establish its dominance abroad?
And what impact did its role in the war have for their market at home?
Robert
Woodruff, the head of Coca-Cola, declared shortly after the attack on
Pearl Harbor that, "We will see that every man in uniform gets a bottle
of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is and whatever it costs our
company." Coke was subsequently declared an essential product and Coke
men called Technical Observers were sent overseas in army uniforms at
government expense to establish 64 bottling plants behind the lines. As a
result, Coca-Cola was put in position for global expansion in the
postwar world.
American soldiers came home with an overwhelming preference for Coca-Cola. In a 1948 poll of veterans, conducted by
American Legion Magazine,
63.67 percent specified Coca-Cola as their preferred soft drink, with
Pepsi receiving a lame 7.78 percent of the vote. In the same year,
Coke’s gross profit on sales reached a whopping $126 million, as opposed
to Pepsi’s $25 million; the contrast in net after-tax income was even
more telling, with Coke’s $35.6 million towering over Pepsi’s pathetic
$3.2 million.
Soon after the war, when the Army quizzed 650
recruits, 21 had never drunk milk, but only one soldier had never
sampled a Coke. As the company’s unpublished history stated, the wartime
program “made friends and customers for home consumption of 11,000,000
GIs [and] did [a] sampling and expansion job abroad which would
[otherwise] have taken 25 years and millions of dollars.” The war was
over, and it appeared, at least for the moment, that Coca-Cola had won
it.
JR: The impact when Coca-Cola entered new markets was
increased sales for all beverages, not just Coca-Cola -- and less
consumption of water and milk. Can you explain that?
Yes.
As Coca-Cola and subsequently other competing soda companies increased
marketing and other campaigns to out-do one another, that's what
expanded the total soda market. When the market for soft drinks
expanded, it helped competitors such as Pepsi, and when people are
paying attention to the cola wars, they are less focused on water or
milk.
JR: Coca-Cola's history practically reads like a
marketing textbook. Can you tell us about its revelation of the little
girl's Pooh bear? Why do Coke-drinkers love Coke so much?
Archie
Lee, who was the ad man behind "The Pause That Refreshes" slogan during
the Depression, noticed during a beach vacation, that his four-year-old
daughter lavished such attention on her Pooh bear that other children
fought over it, though other toys appeared more attractive. Lee took the
incident as a parable. “It isn’t what a product is,” he wrote to Robert
Woodruff, “but what it does that interests us”—and set out to plant the
proper thoughts about Coca-Cola, which he wanted to make as popular and
well-loved as the Pooh bear.
Coke lovers care so much about the
drink for many reasons -- not least the ubiquitous, effective
advertising that associates the drink with youth, energy, happiness. But
many people also really do associate the drink with some of the best
times in their lives.
JR: How has soda consumption changed
in the U.S. from the drink's introduction over a century ago, back when
a serving was 6.5 ounces? Was there ever a "turning point" when
Americans switched from more modest per capita soda consumption to the
amount they drink today, or has it been a gradual change over time?
MP:
Amazingly, Coca-Cola was served in 6.5 ounce bottles for a nickel until
1955, when King-Size Coke was finally introduced. (“King-Size” drinks
were 10 and 12 ounces, smaller than a McDonald’s small today.) Since
then, the sizes grew steadily larger, and PET bottles meant they
wouldn't break and weren't too heavy. Super-size me, indeed. But over
the last decade, concern over the obesity epidemic has made Coca-Cola
back off a bit, and now the company has introduced smaller mini-cans,
along with the huge containers.
JR: Over the years,
Coca-Cola has dealt with Nazis, dictators, South Africa's apartheid
government, and even allegedly Guatemalan death squads. Should consumers
hold Coke accountable for this dark part of its history, or is it all
water under the bridge? Do you agree with Coke's position that it
doesn't play politics, it just sells soda?
MP: Of
course, the company, like any other business, should be held accountable
for its actions, although as you suggest, many of these episodes are
safely in the past. The Guatemalan death squads were in the late 1970s.
Paramilitaries in Colombia killed union employees in similar fashion in
Coke bottling plants in the 1990s.
Quite recently, human rights
violations have once again occurred against Guatemalan bottling
employees. The Coca-Cola Company has usually attempted to distance
itself from such violence, saying that it doesn't control its bottlers,
but that seems disingenuous, since the bottlers rely on Coca-Cola syrup
from Big Coke.
On the other hand, let me point out that while
Coke did business inside South Africa during the apartheid regime, it
left the country for a while and then was very instrumental in helping
to ease a peaceful transition to black rule under Nelson Mandela.
JR:
The past decade has ushered in an enormous change in Coca-Cola's
product portfolio. How has it changed and why? Do you think the day will
come when Coca-Cola's flagship product is no longer its top seller?
MP:
Coca-Cola has diversified in the face of increased competition from
other types of beverages and in response to concern over the obesity
epidemic. It purchased Glaceau, maker of Vitaminwater, for $4.1 billion,
for instance, in 2007. Today the Coca-Cola Company sells 3,500
beverages worldwide, and about a quarter of them are low- or no-calorie.
The
future is hard to predict, but I don't think that Coca-Cola will lose
its place as the flagship product in the foreseeable future -- but I do
predict that the combined sales of Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero will
eventually surpass sales of regular sugary Coca-Cola.
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