The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [58]
Some anti-soda activists, such as CSPI’s Margo Wootan, grudgingly accept the ABA report, though they point out that much of that decrease in soda in schools has been due to binding state legislation. Others, however, look at the industry-funded study with a jaundiced eye, knowing how favorable those studies have been to the soda company biases in the past. At least one independent study leaves serious reason to doubt the trade association’s figures. An annual survey by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan found that in the 2008-2009 school year, only 30 percent of school administrators said they were implementing the guidelines, up from 25 percent the previous year. By contrast, 14 percent said they were not implementing them, and 55 percent—more than half—said they had never even heard of them.
Generally, the fight over schools has been a qualified victory for the anti-soda activists; if nothing else, it was a win in the area of perception; no longer would it be possible for people to drink soda without thinking about the potentially negative health consequences waiting for them inside the can. The fight affected Coke’s bottom line as well—stopping the runaway increases in soda sales for most of the previous century. In early 2006, soda sales fell in the United States for the first time in twenty years, by nearly 1 percent over the previous year. That was followed by several more consecutive years of sales drops—by 2.3 percent in 2007, 3 percent in 2008, and 2.1 percent in 2009.
Where the campaign was successful in changing the public’s consumption of soda, it succeeded through a combination of public support and the vigorous support of the media, which thrives on stories of conflicts with clear battle lines and combatants on both sides—company executives, school administrators, dogged activists, and parents. However unfair it may have seemed to the soda companies to single out soft drinks as the primary cause of obesity and diabetes, the issue resonated with the public, who after all must have secretly suspected that pouring all of that sugar down their throats just couldn’t be good for them in the long term.
The tactical decision to focus the fight on schools also helped to frame the issue in a way that was impossible for the public not to understand. As the campaign against tobacco did with Joe Camel and other instances of child marketing, it garnered the sympathy of the populace, which instinctively understands that even if adults are free to choose what they put inside their bodies, children need protection. Finally, the campaign made effective use of the power of the purse, speaking the language that school administrators and soda companies understood, whether it was Jackie Domac’s grant to implement healthy food choices or Dick Daynard’s threat to sue Coke for damages.
Where the anti-soda forces failed, it was in removing the pressure it had so expertly marshaled just as it was beginning to bear fruit, taking away the cudgel of the lawsuit, their biggest weapon, as they began negotiating with Coke and the other companies, who then had every incentive to stall until they could find a more favorable deal elsewhere. And by focusing so completely on the school issue, the campaign against soda lost a chance to talk about the messier but arguably more significant