The Global Failure To Disclose Carcinogenic Contaminants In Bottled Drinks Sold To Children

Ross E. Getman, Esq. DC and NYS bars (email)

THE RECORD

Keep cola out of our schools

Monday, January 24, 2005

By ROSS E. GETMAN

RANDY RANSOM, who runs marketing for Coca-Cola brands in North America, has said that the "Real" advertising campaign "re-energized the brand. It has made the brand seem a little younger, hipper, more connected than it was before."

One new ad launched recently as part of its "Make It Real" campaign deals with a band made up of teenage girls, with a guy who is allowed to tag along because he's good at loading equipment. In another ad, a teenager gives his dad the last soda from the refrigerator.

Coca-Cola sees this sort of campaign and its line of new products as part of the solution. Instead, they are part of the problem.

Coke Classic sales, according to Beverage Digest, declined 7.1 percent through Nov. in U.S. supermarkets, Pepsi-Cola fell even more - 9.2 percent. The reason for the decline might relate to issues more fundamental than the addition of two words to an advertising slogan.

Chairman and Chief Executive E. Neville Isdell said in Nov. that he would boost Coke's annual marketing and innovation spending by $350 million to $400 million worldwide, with much of that destined for North America and support of Coke's flagship sugar water, Coke Classic. But spending money on such commercials - or adding sugar to a new line of product ("flavored waters") - is not sound marketing. It does not take into account the change in consumer preferences for healthful products.

Back in 1884, about the time John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola, a reference in the field described the effect of Coca leaves: "Therapeutically, this is a nervous excitant, its effects resembling those of tea and coffee, imparting to the system, under extreme physical exertion and fatigue, a vigor and buoyancy that is surprising. The natives of Peru are said to live for days on nothing else than Coca leaves mixed with lime and chewed."

Coca-Cola's research and development and marketing response to the epidemic in childhood obesity has been to add sugar (flavored waters), caffeine (Full Throttle) and lime. Its response is not merely not innovative, it is a return to the 1880s when Coca-Cola was marketed by John Pemberton as a "brain tonic."

When the government first sued Coca-Cola in 1911 for marketing caffeinated sugar water to children, Coca-Cola denied that the caffeine in soda was addicting. For the past 100 years, Coca-Cola has paid scientists and public relations people to create a false controversy on health issues while marketing to children and teens.

This month, the No. 1 and No. 2 Coca-Cola marketing people in India left. Just days earlier, a court in India had directed that an inquiry be conducted into the healthfulness of soda, particularly for children. In the United States, Arnold Schwarzenegger told the San Francisco Chronicle that it was "ludicrous" to sell soda in our public schools and urged that legislators enact a statewide ban.

Soda is already banned in public schools in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as New York City, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Austin, Las Vegas and many other cities.

Coca-Cola, Make It Real.

Kids, Just Say No.

Arnold, Just Do It.

Ross E. Getman is an attorney who has brought an action in New York State that seeks to stop Coca-Cola's promotion of soda to schoolchildren through long-term exclusive contracts that are intended to prevent future boards from going soda-free. Send comments about this article to oped@northjersey.com.