Its that time of year again and I know it is, because of this infamous advert!
Coca Cola are so successful! I now associate Christmas nearly here as soon as I see their 'holidays are coming advert on television! How do they do it? Their advert is so magical, I love it! Coca Cola calls itself ' the world's soft drink' for a very good reason, that reason I believe is definitely helped by its
Public Relations campaigns!
Something I have to say is the fact that until studying public relations I would never have considered whether as an organisation they live up to their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) now I have, but I can't say it has put me off buying the product or stopped me enjoying their holiday ads! Coca-Cola's largest bottling plants in India, in Plachimada, Kerala, has been shut down since March 2004 because government and independent agencies have confirmed that the bottling plant has polluted the water and soil in the area. How did they keep this so under wraps? Why does this not affect their reputation like it would another smaller Corporation?
Coca Cola where found out! They did not respect the rights of farmers and groundwater conditions leaving the community in a very valuable situation.
How has Coca Cola retained their reputation and leading sales figures over their rivals Pepsi?
How have they come out the other end of their unethical sourcing in Indian unscathed?
This has sparked activist debates around the world! – Have you heard about it?
If not, why do you think this is?
Anyone who doesn't love that coke advert is dead inside, I swear.
ReplyDeleteThere's a new one now. It's ok, but it doesn't use that song, so I'm not as impressed. Still ,it's not terrible.
Honestly I hadn't heard about the India situation, but am I alone in assuming that pretty much any bigger corporation is likely to be messing someone up somewhere in the world? To assume Coke are evil and Pepsi are good simply because coke got caught seems silly, and I pretty much just assume that any big corporation is doing something with child labour, or destroying the environment, or paying its workers crappy wages.
That's why things in our country are so cheap, and as a terrible as it sounds, I like cheap things and I like coke. I do have a social concious, I don't believe these companies SHOULD explot third world countries and if it meant I had to pay 10p more for my coke, I would.
At the same time, you can only care about so much.. if you stopped using every product from every company that did something wrong in the third world you'd starve to death.
When denial is the best PR crisis strategy...CocaCola proves that with a global company, it is perfectly possible to keep "local problems" contained and not infecting your general brand image. And, yeah, as an American I can count my christmas years in Coke ads. The ones in the 70s were the best...."it's the real thing" Can't believe I fell for such a vacuous slogan...
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