The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [147]
Just as Asa Candler and Robert Woodruff were happy to give millions for philanthropic causes but resented paying thousands in taxes, today’s generation of leaders at Coke have done real good in the world—building schools, sponsoring physical education, spurring recycling, stewarding water—when their programs are both voluntary and in support of the larger goals of the company. In a perfect world, the free market would ensure it more broadly took health and environmental issues through pressure from consumers in buying products that supported their moral viewpoint. The amount of money and advertising Coke has put into creating its brand, however, distorts the ability of consumer actions to hold it accountable.
The actions against Coke show that changing a corporation against its will requires two things: binding legal consequences that threaten its bottom line and a sustained public campaign that threatens its brand image. In places where activists have been most successful against Coke—for example, in the closure of the Hindustan Coca-Cola plant in Kerala—both elements have been present. In places where neither is there—look no farther than Chiapas—a campaign can barely get off the ground. And of the two elements, it is ultimately the threat to brand image that has proved more important in Coke’s case—that’s why the campaigners against soda in schools were able to eke out an agreement without the threat of a lawsuit, while the Colombian union leaders foundered once they took away the public pressure of a campaign.
In each of these cases, the tactics by the company have been the same—to remove the threat to its brand without agreeing to any enforceable requirements that might hold it accountable down the line. To fight back the various threats, the company has allayed public pressure by promising increasingly strict but still voluntary solutions—guidelines on soda sales it could oversee, workplace policies that applied only to direct employees, independent investigations that didn’t actually investigate the most controversial accusations—until it found ones that the general public would accept.
In the case of the murder of Isidro Gil and the other Colombian union members, that was enough. When the decision came down on the ATCA appeal on August 11, 2009, it surprised no one. In a thirty-page opinion, the three-judge panel essentially called the allegations “too vague and conclusory” to warrant further discovery. Barring some sensational testimony from a demobilized paramilitary commander, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what connections, if any, Coke’s Colombian bottlers—much less Coke Atlanta—had to the murders. In point of fact, though, we’ll also never know with any certainty whether Coke is innocent. After all, if the company honestly had no involvement in the violence, then why have company executives so long resisted an investigation into the murders, as their own general counsel urged them to conduct more than five years ago?
In at least one regard, Potter and Collingsworth agree—the union members do look to the lawsuit and the Killer Coke campaign as the reason they are still alive. Despite its missteps during negotiations, the campaign did show how an activist campaign could support a court case and lead a company to change its policies, if not its practices. And however confident the Coca-Cola Company may be that Neville Isdell’s combination of socially responsible marketing, penthouse negotiations, and predetermined investigations has dispensed with the activist campaign, his final appearance as CEO of the Coca-Cola Company showed the activists against Coke are not through yet.
It was a diminished crew that arrived for Coke’s annual shareholder meeting in April 2009. Unlike past years when the meeting had been held in Wilmington, this year Coke had called it home to Atlanta, ostensibly as a tribute to outgoing