Besides Happiness, What Global Values Are Sold In the Coke Can?
Thu, March 4, 2010 Among my vices, drinking Coke, Pepsi or any soft drink isn’t one of them.
I’ve never fallen for the ‘Coke is happiness’ marketing angle, having counted calories as my only way of maintaining weight, and staving off an early onset of diabetes. Getting serious about my health, I hold sugar at bay. Actually, I’m happier not drinking Coke, although it’s not my intent to inflame the passions of a great global brand.
On the subject of passion, I rebelled a couple months ago, over Diet Coke’s takeover of my email box, spreading its Coke is happiness message before I even had my 5am French Roast.
Being a savvy woman, I know that great sex makes me lots happier than drinking a red can, and Coke kills my sex life in a way that a good lover will not. Read my take on orgasms in Coca Cola Does Not Deliver Big O Happiness in a Can.
Yesterday, writing a belated post Does Coke Keep Women in Poverty?, I decided to dig deeper into Coke’s relationship with family budgets in developing countries.
Mirte Maas by Laurence Ellis, Mirage #2Seeing this babe Mirte Maas, photographed by Laurence Ellis in Mirage #2 — in what must be one of the more vapid fashion editorials I’ve seen in months — I decided to share my Coke thoughts this moment. Fashion doesn’t wait.
When I speak of Modern, Cultural Creative and Traditional values, Coke tries to be Traditional by selling happiness in a can, but I suspect a deep investigation of Coca Cola will make them as Modern as Maas. (Note that I truly hope that Coke didn’t pay good money for this product placement.)
If anyone will ‘undo’ Coke, it will be the Cultural Creatives and the Smart Sensuality woman who loves Modern fashion and style but is very concerned about the Cultural Creatives corporate pedigree of the product. She was not amused when Coke admitted that Dasani was tap water.
Modern values companies have moved from doing nothing to engage with global activism and developing world concerns to trying to put a best face on the brand, as the challenges mount against multinationals and selling people what they don’t need in poor countries.
Mirte Maas by Laurence Ellis, for Mirage #2The Modern woman believes we’re all suckers, dazzled fashionistas intent on looking like supermodels, who will forget that while Coke’s new plastic bottle is 30% ‘green’ sugar cane, the rest isn’t. A mere 27% of PET (petroleum-based) plastic bottles were recycled in America in 2008, which means Coke continues to be a heavy contributor to the Great Pacific garbage dump and the global demand for limited oil reserves. Facts are facts.
Coke says it has a totally bio-degradable bottle in development but currently it’s not cost-effective to manufacture.
The Smart Sensuality woman sees through the Coke happpiness marketing effort, knowing that 21st century life is more than an ad slogan and bevy of supermodels who she can never be anyway.
Mirte Maas by Laurence Ellis, Mirage #2When it comes to developing countries, she looks beneath the bed covers, and that’s where Coke could get dicey.
Research shows that the world’s poorest families (typically the men in those families) spend about 20% of their incomes on a combo of alcohol, cigarettes, prostitution, soft drinks and extravagant festivals.
Nicholas Kristof interviewed Socorro Machado in Nicarauga. Formerly this impoverished mom bought her family a $1.75 bottle of Coke every day. Now just once a week, the family enjoys Coke’s happiness in a bottle. She saves $5 for herself and $5 for her son, so he can buy a computer.
Perhaps you see where my mind is going, and I admit I haven’t given much thought to this topic.
Let me give you another developing world possibility to consider. If young girls could afford sanitary napkins and not Coke, they would stay in school, or perhaps not miss 21 days of school because they can only bleed on rags.
At a time when the future profits of companies like Coke are targeted at developing countries — because America is working to ban soft drinks from schools, as a prime contributor to our obesity epidemic — are there any ethics involved in Coke competing for very limited family budget dollars?
Should the priority be sanitary napkins over Coke? A family computer over Coke? Do families who sell their daughters for income also drink Coke? That’s definitely not happiness in a can.
Wouldn’t poor families have better future prospects with a computer and money in the bank, rather than a Coke in their tummies?
All drink for thought, and I don’t have the answers. Ah, the quandry of being a corporate consultant who actually does believe that only business will save the world. This question has even me stymied. Anne
Coca Cola Does Not Deliver Big O Happiness in a Can
To Diet Coke or Not: The Beverage Wars Take Shape (good discussion of The Moderns and The Cultural Creatives)
Does Coke Keep Women in Poverty?
Fashion photos via Fashion Gone Rogue.
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