The Coke Machine - Michael Blanding [59]
In the end, it’s debatable exactly how effective the fight against soda in schools has actually been in schools themselves. A 2008 study in Maine published by the Society for Nutrition Education compared intake of soda by kids at high schools where soda was banned with intake in schools where it wasn’t, finding no difference in overall consumption. Another study, of 11,000 fifth-graders in forty states, found soft drink consumption by kids decreased just 4 percent after soda was banned at their elementary schools. After expending all of their political capital on the fight to get soda out of schools, however, activist groups have found it hard to make headway outside that realm. Putting warning labels on bottles or restricting serving sizes are almost a nonstarter, while recent attempts to push a state or national “soda tax”—Asa Candler’s old nemesis—have been slow to catch on.
Whether or not the Clinton deal was a victory for activists, it certainly was one for Coke, which was spared a public thrashing in the courts while tying their ship to one of the country’s more popular public figures. Most important, the brand was kept intact, with Diet Coke and Coke Zero in the vending machines, and the Spencerian-script logo flashing brightly in the hallways. And there was evidence Isdell’s pledge to turn around the company was being kept. Throughout his tenure, overall company growth continued to surpass analysts’ expectations—with increases of 6 percent in 2007 and 5 percent in 2008. Much of that growth was thanks to the overseas market, which represents 80 percent of Coke’s total sales. But the Clinton deal staved off the worst of the slide in the United States. While sugar soft drinks continued to decline by a percentage point or two a year in the past few years, today’s youth has hardly been the “lost generation” for soda, as one analyst had predicted in 2006.
And to make up the difference domestically, Isdell started a new round of product launches and acquisitions that took the battle to Pepsi on several new fronts, including a big new push on bottled water. Coke might never achieve its once-upon-a-time dream of seeing the C on the tap stand for “Coke.” But if it couldn’t beat water, it could do the next best thing: brand it.
FIVE
The Bottled Water Lie
The noise is deafening on the bottling floor of the Needham Heights Sales Facility, the largest Coca-Cola bottling plant in Massachusetts and the sixteenth largest in the country. Cans of Diet Coke swirl around in a giant silver whirligig, blinking lights indicating each is being filled with the proper amount of carbonated water and syrup. The din dies in the warehouse next door, where hundreds of thousands of cans and bottles of Coke, Sprite, Nestlé iced tea, Minute Maid juice, and other products under the Coca-Cola umbrella are stacked in rows as far as the eye can see, calling to mind the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But tucked amid these boxes is another whirring collection of machinery. Test tube-sized nipples of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic are dumped into a giant centrifuge, where they are blown by compressed air into 20-ounce bottles. On an adjoining piece of equipment, the full bottles reappear, filled to the brim with water. They trundle naked down the assembly line to get sealed and slapped with their label: Dasani.
It’s here that Coke’s vaunted brand of bottled water is made, and where, by extension, the fortunes of the Coca-Cola Company were rescued. The actual process by which ordinary water is turned into Dasani is hidden inside a separate “water room,” which the plant manager describes as a bunch of twenty-foot stainless-steel tubes through which the water is shot at high pressure to be filtered. No amount of pleading will persuade the Coca-Cola Enterprises press agent giving the tour today to allow a peek inside. Like the secret formula for Coca-Cola hidden deep inside an Atlanta safe-deposit box, the process behind