Oy vey, did they send Coke PR people to the charm-school of Lizzie Grubman or what? First some fool in Denmark tells a site not to link to coke, and now Coke India are threatening to slap a defamation suit for Rs. 2 Million on a photographer simply because one of his photographs doesn't appeal to Coke.
Bad move, brown sugar water. In India coke already has it's problems with goodwill, especially in the south where the Plachimada Coke-botteling facility was shut down after intense community pressure, but has now been re-opened after the the Kerala High Court now has permitted Coca-Cola to extract up to 500,000 liters of water from the common groundwater resource per day. See "Let Them Drink Coke" at IPnews and google newsclusters about it, or head straight to India Resource for more Coke India news. Apparantely it takes seven times as much water to create one bottle of Coke, a process that can't bode well for areas that already lack, and thus need, water.
So when Sharad Haksar took a quite poetic photograph of colorful pitchers lining up in front of a waterpump, which just happens to be situated near a wall that has a "Drink Coca Cola" ad painted all over it, and to top it all off displayed his art on a billboard, coke wasn't happy at all. The gall of this artist! Coke claims this billboard has done 'incalcuable damage' to their brand and want it withdrawn immediately, they also want "unconditional apology".
An Indian adgrunt who was involved in the process of creating this art-on a billboard says:
The billboard was put in the city of Chennai in south india. Chennai has a huge water problem during summer. We thought we will tell an ironic story by contrasting this with the ubiquitous coke wall painting. Somehow the irony has rubbed coke the wrong way, and now they are up in arms.
Related bad PR for Coke, Indian farmers spray their fields with Coke, as it contains traces of pesticides.
Adland® is a commercial-laden heaven and hell for advertising addicts around the world.
This advertising publication was founded in 1996, built on beer and bravery, Adland® now boasts the largest super bowl commercials collection in the world.
Adland® survives on your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi. Adland® works best in Brave browser
If the people of Chennai organized themselves and started a grassroots boycott of Coke that spread around the country, they could easily force the plant to close. Or at least operate at a staggering loss. And Coke could easily figght all this bad press by taking some simple action to help maintain the water supply. Is Chennai a coastal town or inland? Coke could dig wells, co-op build a desalinization plant, etc etc. and turn this PR nightmare into an actual win for them and win for the people of Chennai. But of course, they won't, because they're jackass corporate pigs.
- reply
PermalinkMinor nitpick, digging more wells doesn't magically make more groundwater appear. Massive amounts of rain does.
But to be fair, Coke's point of view should be heard as well. Here is what they say "We believe the allegations are motivated more by an anti-globalisation agenda, rather than by those with genuine environmental concerns. Any fact-based discussion of this issue would reveal that there is no basis for the allegations."
- reply
PermalinkWell if they need water they could always buy Dasani (tap water).. right?
Sorry.
PS - India resource now also has an article about this where they speak to Sharad Haksar.
- reply
PermalinkIsn't there a drought in India now? I'm sure that has a lot more to do with the groundwater problem than the consumption of one bottling plant.
- reply
Permalinki'd be more concerned about the pesticide and polluting claims. Especially since I'd imagine that laws against that kind of thing are pretty non existent.
- reply
PermalinkIt's *unreal* That I'm reading the phrase "anti-globalisation agenda" in an article from fifteen years ago. Was this site always ahead of its time?
- reply
Permalink