For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

by Mark Pendergrast

  Writing about Coke’s global availability, one American essayist commented, “Somehow that is very, very comforting. It means we can go into much of the world and find our security blanket waiting.” While that may sound like the statement of an Ugly American, other travelers who leave their native lands routinely experience the same feeling. For the German, Greek, Japanese, Argentine, or Nigerian, the sight of a familiar Coca-Cola sign is often reassuring. Coca-Cola is unlikely, however, to homogenize world culture completely, with religious sects, nationalistic fervor, and ethnic group loyalists more powerful than ever.

  Roberto Goizueta was correct when he told a group of bright-eyed high school seniors, “Corporations are not as pious as I might be tempted to tell you they are. Nor are they evil as some portray them to be. The truth is somewhere in the middle.”

  COCA-COLA POLITICS

  Just as missionaries believe that any human soul is ripe for the True Gospel, Coca-Cola marketers rarely distinguish among nations. “We believe in the future of [all] countries,” Don Keough once wrote. “We’ll ride through whatever political or economic conditions exist.” Consequently, Coke never pulled out of Chile when Pinochet was in power. Indeed, the Company appreciated the booming, stable economy under the South American dictator. Nor did the Company leave Indonesia because of atrocities committed by the Suharto regime. “We do have a social conscience,” one Coke manager told me, “but we don’t enter politics. We’ve never lost an election, because we never run. Our job is simply to provide a moment of pleasure to consumers around the world without concern for the form or type of government under which they live.” He paused and smiled broadly. “We make life a little brighter. We serve humanity.” Asa Candler would have applauded.

  It seems disingenuous, however, to assert that Coca-Cola does not enter politics. At least since World War II, the soft drink, as highly charged with symbolism as with CO2, has been politics. If, instead of courting the Chinese, Roberto Goizueta had tried to persuade his friend George H. W. Bush to withdraw China’s most favored nation status, perhaps that country’s leaders would have reconsidered Tiananmen Square or the prolonged Chinese rape of Tibet. After all, those sweet-faced Tibetan monks who visited the World of Coca-Cola Museum cried when asked about their country’s plight, and with good reason.

  Yet Coke still made the most of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, despite activists’ protests, and the annual Chinese per capita consumption of Company products rose to 38 in 2011. Muhtar Kent looked forward to the day China would become Coke’s top market. “It’s like a well-managed company, China,” Kent observed admiringly. “You have a one-stop shop in terms of the Chinese foreign investment agency. . . . In China and other markets around the world, you see the kind of attention to detail about how business works and how business creates employment.”

  Coca-Cola executives argue that the only way to ensure Coke’s influence for good is to maintain their products’ ubiquitous presence. Besides, if Coke pulled out, Pepsi would simply move in unimpeded, a thought much worse than any human rights violations. Perhaps the influx of Coca-Cola and Big Macs creates goodwill towards the West and can soften China’s dictatorial, repressive policies more effectively than can sanctions.

  Coca-Cola’s official South African divestiture in 1986 represented an exception to the policy of ignoring political considerations, but public opinion obviously dictated that decision. South Africa is one place where Coke officials clearly did serve humanity. Coca-Cola executives practiced a kind of corporate shuttle diplomacy, meeting with Nelson Mandela and other black leaders to assure them of the Company’s support in the struggle against apartheid and to ensure Coke a presence in the new order. In a bloodbath, Coke sales would have gone down. Coca-Cola remained a steadfast friend of Mandela throughout his South African presidency and moved its concentrate plant back into the country.

  And therein lies the true beauty of capitalism. The Coca-Cola religion has no real morality, no commandment other than increased consumption of its drinks. Consequently, over its history it has been perfectly willing to coexist with Hitler, bejeweled Maharajas, impoverished migrant workers, malnourished Africans, Guatemalan death squads, clear-cut Belizean rainforests, or repressive Chinese. Unlike most world governments, however, The Coca-Cola Company eventually acts out of enlightened self-interest. Because it values its squeaky-clean image above all else, it generally reacts more quickly to bad publicity than any potentate.

  And bad publicity will undoubtedly keep coming. I met Ray Rogers of the Killer Coke campaign at the April 2012 annual Coca-Cola shareholders meeting in an Atlanta suburb, where he and his cohorts repeatedly interrupted Muhtar Kent with a rehearsed call-and-response of “Point of order—You lie!” Kent fielded hostile questions about discarded beverage bottles, worker intimidation in Mexico, chemical caramel, high-fructose corn syrup, and water depletion in India. The newest flap involved alleged racial discrimination against black and Latino workers at two Coca-Cola plants in New York, involving purportedly unfavorable work assignments, unfair discipline and retaliation, and a work environment where racial slurs went unchallenged by management. In an obviously staged response, Kent called on four supportive black employees from the New York plants to stand up at the meeting, and he suggested that Ray Rogers meet with them afterwards, but they subsequently refused to talk to him.

  Consequently, it is arguably up to us, the public, to monitor Coke’s corporate behavior. Faced with boycotts of sufficient size, loud enough protests, documentaries of appropriate proportion, or shareholder resolutions representing large enough chunks of stock, the Company will act. Sometimes, it will even act pre-emptively to avoid such trouble. For its own selfish ends, then, Coca-Cola does indeed try to promote the peace and harmony it promises in its commercials.

  And the Company’s pursuit of the halo effect through do-good activities really does good. Neville Isdell coined the phrase “Connected Capitalism” to describe “a true marriage between government, nonprofits, and global corporations to fight disease and poverty, heal the planet, improve education, and, ultimately, boost private-sector profits.” Muhtar Kent called it the “Golden Triangle of business, government and civil society.” Through partnerships with organizations such as the Gates Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund, Coke helped to supply safe water, vaccines, and insecticide-treated bed nets to the poor; to ameliorate climate change; to protect endangered species; and more. The Company promoted physical activity, recycling, education, and water stewardship. In 2011, primarily through its Coca-Cola Foundation, the Company donated $123.5 million to charitable causes, amounting to 1.2 percent of operating income.

  At the annual meeting, Kent repeated one of his favorite anecdotes about Preeti Gupta, who started a small store that thrived in her living room in rural India. Coca-Cola gave her a solar-powered cooler so that she could sell chilled Cokes and charge a lantern so her children could see to study at night. And Coke made a few more sales. The Company touts its 5by20 program, aiming to empower five million women to become successful entrepreneurs—selling Coke products, collecting recyclables, growing mangos—by 2020. Through Kiva.org (which has no connection to Coca-Cola), I have helped fund microcredit loans to needy businesses in the developing world, and I noticed that several businesses run by women in the devastated Democratic Republic of the Congo were requesting money to buy and sell Fanta.

  In 2006, when I was researching Inside the Outbreaks, I visited rural schools in western Kenya where the drinking water came from polluted streams and ponds that sickened and sometimes killed the children. The simple, innovative Safe Water System got the schools to add diluted bleach to the water, dispensed from special narrow-mouthed jars with spigots, and taught the children to wash their hands. There, in the middle of nowhere, Coca-Cola logos were painted on the washing stations outside the latrines. Coke was helping to pay for the program.

  In the perfect world of a Coke executive’s dreams, the biggest conflicts will be similar to the fight between Miss
World and Miss Universe of 1995—the latter signed up to advertise Coke, while her rival shilled for Pepsi. Or consider that when Barack Obama accepted the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination at Denver’s Pepsi Center, Coca-Cola Recycling was there to grab the empties, while Coke products were served at Sports Authority Field at Mile High, where Obama gave his acceptance speech. In this perfect world, global politics will be run, not by small-minded, war-prone, ethnocentric nation-states, but by benign multinationals that want only for you to swallow their beverages. Their local bottlers—Serbs, Albanians, Hutus, Tutsis, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Tibetans, Germans, French, Russians, Americans, Arabs, Jews—will discourage strife in order to boost per capita consumption. All you need to restore tranquility is a good burp.

  Unfortunately for Coca-Cola (and perhaps for the rest of us), the world doesn’t work that way all the time. In the post–Cold War euphoria of the mid-1990s, it appeared that a global economy based on unrestrained international free enterprise might lead automatically to greater good for all. But a global economic downturn shook confidence in the late 1990s, terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center towers in 2001, and the world fell headlong into a prolonged recession in 2008. Wars, violence, and upheaval continue.

  With such harsh realities in mind, it is difficult to take critics too seriously when they rant against Coca-Cola as the monstrous corporation that is ruining the world. Given the choice between a fizzy soft drink and a suicide bomber, I’ll grab the Coke any day.

  BORN AGAIN

  When I started researching this book over two decades ago, I was surprised to find that officials of an American soft drink company had such ready access to powerful world figures. Now, nothing would startle me. After all, Coca-Cola’s annual sales surpass the entire economies of many countries in which the drink is bottled and sold. As the colorful Harrison Jones once put it, “The Coca-Cola Company is like an elephant’s ass. You throw a rock in any direction and you’re likely to hit it.” Or as another more recent commentator has written, “Coca-Cola is more durable, less vulnerable, more self-correcting than the Roman Empire. This product is destined to outlast the USA.” And aside from controversies over nutrition, obesity, culture, advertising, politics, water depletion, labor issues, and death squads, The Coca-Cola Company has been a force for good in the world.

  Even though Coke’s motivations stem primarily from concerns over its image, the firm and its bottlers always supply fresh, clean water (or soft drinks) when natural disasters—earthquake, flood, fire, famine—strike. When Hurricane Georges struck Puerto Rico in 1998, for instance, Coke was there to help homeless victims. “They particularly enjoyed and appreciated the Coca-Cola, Sprite and water we gave them,” wrote a Coke employee. “It was a great feeling to help, even in a small way.” Similarly, when a terrible tsunami devastated Japan in 2011, Muhtar Kent flew there days later to announce a $30 million reconstruction fund.

  Unfortunately, Coke lobbies strenuously against bottle-bill legislation and set up a Civic Action Network, a “non-partisan grassroots” organization, to protest such bills, along with soda taxes. A comparison of the litter along Georgia roadsides to states with a redeemable nickel deposit such as Vermont, where I live, certainly indicates that container bills work. But Coke can legitimately point out that it actively promotes recycling of its products. People end up wearing many of the recycled bottles as clothing or felt-like winter hats.

  The Company supports innovative educational programs in the United States and elsewhere, and no one could calculate the amount of philanthropic largesse directly or indirectly attributable to Coca-Cola. Aside from the Company’s foundation, gigantic funds devoted to the public good contain Woodruff, Whitehead, Lupton, Thomas, Bradley, and Goizueta money, not to mention innumerable local charities of American and foreign bottlers. Robert Woodruff correctly observed that everyone who touched the magical drink would make money, and, fortunately, a great deal of it has been spent wisely, particularly in the city of Atlanta.

  Even in normal times, Coca-Cola has certainly proved a boon to local economies around the world, regardless of what one may think of its impact on local culture and dietary habits. University of South Carolina researchers studied what happened as Coke entered Poland and Romania during the 1991–1994 period. They concluded that for every job in the Coca-Cola bottling system, ten jobs were created in the retail sector. In essence, Coke helped to create an entrepreneurial class where there had been none. This “multiplier effect” has been documented in other countries as well, including a 2012 study in Italy estimating a thirteen-to-one indirect job impact.

  One of my best friends from high school days has now retired from The Coca-Cola Company. Call him David. He looks and seems the same as ever, aside from creeping gray, and we’ve kept in touch over the years. David once showed me family pictures taken during a beach vacation. Smiling into the camera, he wore a Coca-Cola T-shirt. “God,” I laughed, “you can’t even get away from it on vacation, can you?” He laughed, too, then said simply, “I don’t want to.” I realized at that moment that a subtle transformation had taken place within my friend. Some would call it a transfusion in which his blood flowed a caramel shade. He had been born again, and though he never tried to convert me, I knew he practiced a religion that I continue to find somewhat amusing, somewhat alarming, and ultimately mystifying. He had become a Coca-Cola man.

  Yet I must add a cautionary note. When he learned I was working on a new edition, another former Coke man lamented, “I’m not sure whether the title of your book still makes sense, as it absolutely did 20 years ago. For many reasons, I don’t think there are nearly as many ‘Coca-Cola men’ or women as there were two decades ago.”

  I fear that he is correct. Working for The Coca-Cola Company is no longer the higher calling that it once was. Many come to work for Coke for a while merely as a stepping-stone in a career. But much of the magic, and of the religion, remains, at least more than with most corporations. For this edition, I interviewed a former Coke marketer whose job was cut in one of the purges of the early twenty-first century. He remained somewhat bitter, but he obviously loved talking about Coca-Cola, and, when I commented on that, he paused for a moment, then said, “It’s funny, but it sort of gets in your blood.”

  __________________

  * In 1959, one Coke director told E. J. Kahn Jr., “I sometimes shudder at the thought of all those poor people paying a nickel for a Coke when they probably ought to be spending it on a loaf of bread.” If any Company men harbor those reservations today, none of them have shared them with me.

  * Without making such overt political statements, artists such as Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and Robert Rauschenberg painted Coca-Cola bottles as evocations of materialistic capitalism, while academic folklorists created a subspecialty of “Cokelore.” Cormac McCarthy added to their fodder by featuring Coca-Cola prominently in his postapocalyptic novel, The Road.

  * At the same time, Coke faced a small but growing challenge from SodaStream, an Israeli company selling machines that produce cheaper homemade soft drinks. It took its stock public in 2010 and mocked Coke in controversial ads and a “Cage” campaign claiming that an average family uses over 10,000 soda containers in five years that can be replaced by one SodaStream bottle.

  APPENDIX 1: THE SACRED FORMULA

  When I set out to write a comprehensive history of Coca-Cola, I had no idea I would stumble across the original formula, particularly not in the bowels of the Company itself. After all, this was the world’s best-kept trade secret, one that the Company had already refused to reveal under two judges’ orders. In 1977, the Company departed from India rather than hand the sacred formula to the insistent government. Yet one day during my research, an archivist brought out a file with individual yellowing, tattered papers that had been lovingly restored and laminated inside plastic. He explained that this constituted the remains of John Pemberton’s formula book, donated to the Company in the 1940s.

  I already
knew the story behind this formula book. As a young man, John P. Turner had traveled from his hometown of Columbus, Georgia, to apprentice with John Pemberton in his final few years. After Pemberton’s death, Turner took the formula book back to Columbus, where he served as a pharmacist for many years. In 1943, Turner’s son showed the book to a member of the Coca-Cola board, opening it to a page containing the formula. The board member persuaded the Turner heir to let him have the book. “My God!” Harrison Jones, the board chairman, exclaimed when he saw the formula. “Where did you get that?” And that was the last anyone ever saw of it.

  The file I received in the Coca-Cola archives stated that this was the “account and formula book belonging to Dr. J. S. Pemberton while a druggist in Columbus,” but that is almost certainly incorrect, since one of the recipes for a celery cola includes Coca-Cola by name as an ingredient, undoubtedly placing it in 1888, since Pemberton was working on the celery drink at the time of his death. My heart raced as I carefully leafed through the preserved pages, but of course I assumed that the Company had hidden one crucial item deep in a vault somewhere. Consequently, I was astonished to find what appeared to be a Coca-Cola recipe, unlabeled except for an “X” at the top of the page:

  Citrate Caffein Ext. Vanilla Flavoring 1 oz.

  Ext. Vanilla 1 oz.

  Flavoring 2 ½ oz.

  F. E.Coco 4 oz.

  Citric Acid 3 oz.

  Lime Juice 1 Qt.

  Sugar 30 lbs.

  Water 2 ½ Gal.

  Caramel sufficient

  Mix Caffeine Acid and Lime Juice in 1 Qt Boiling water add vanilla and flavoring when cool.