Project Summary: • Company History • Marketing Strategies • 1999 Belgian PR Crisis and Solution • SWOT Analysis • Recommendations

1. Principles of Management
&
It’s Domiciliary in
“The Emerging Markets”
A Presentation by..
Abhizar Bootwala

3. The Company..
• Pharmacist, John Styth Pemberton first introduced the refreshing taste of
Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia in 1886.
Pemberton concocted a caramel-coloured syrup in a brass kettle in his
backyard. He first "distributed" the new product by carrying Coca-Cola in a
jug down the street to Jacobs Pharmacy.
• Initially sold as a patent medicine for 5 cents a glass.
• Pemberton claimed that it cured diseases such as headache, impotence,
and morphine addiction.

4. The First Coca-Cola Ad

5. The yester years..
• 1886 - Sales of Coca-Cola averaged nine drinks per day.
• 1887 - Businessman Asa Griggs Candler acquires stake in the company
and in 1888 incorporates it as the Coca Cola company.
• 1893 - In January "Coca-Cola" was registered in the U.S. Patent office.
• 1917 - 3 Million Coke's sold per day.
• 1919 - Buy-over of Coca-Cola to business-man Asa Griggs Candler for $
25 million.
• 1925 - 6 Million Coke's sold per day.
• 1927 - The first Coca-Cola Radio advertisement.
• 1929 - Coca-Cola was made available through vending machines.
• 1950 – First television Advertisement.
• 1977 - The Coca-Cola contour bottle was patented.
• 1978 - Two litre plastic bottles introduced.

6. • 1982 - Diet Coke was introduced in July targeting health conscious
consumers.
• 1993 - Coca-Cola exceeds sales of 10 Billion cases worldwide.
• 1993 - Advertising slogan -"Always Coca-Cola".
• 1995 – Coke consumed aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery
• 1907-1948
The Coca-Cola expands its bottling operations in:
Hawaii, Philippines, France, Belgium, Bermuda, Colombia, Honduras, Italy,
Mexico, Haiti and Burma, China, Guatemala, Holland, Spain, Venezuela,
Morocco, Germany, Australia, Scotland and many more.

7. Prologue:
• 1999 - Coca-Cola Enterprises has one of their worst public relations
nightmare in its 113 year history.
• 8th June, 1999 - Students in Bornem, Belgium noticed that the coke they
had purchased had a bad smell. School administrators called the Coca-
Cola Enterprises (CCE) plant that morning to complain.
• CCE is a European bottler owned 40% by Coca-Cola with plants in
Antewerp, Dunkirk & Ghent.
• At the same in the town of Belsele, city officials called and complained of
bad smelling coke from vending machines
• Now Coca-Cola realized that a crisis was occurring.

8. • 14th
June, 1999 - Luc Van den Bossche bans sales of all Coca-Cola
soft drinks from the three plants Antwerp, Dunkirk, and Ghent.
CCE withdraws15 million cans and bottles.
• Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light, Sprite, Nestea, Aquarius lemon, orange, and grapefruit,
Bon Aqua, Kinley Tonic and Lilt.
• However continues to mishandle the situation by not giving clear information
to the public and health officials. They declared that there was no real
problem and all bottles with codes DU, DV and DW had been removed.
• Despite this 38 more students became ill.
• CCE later realises that list was incomplete and that all cans stamped with
the code DX and DP should have been removed.
• Problems continue. France officials complained that incorrect information
was being provided by CCE.

9. • With additional problems being reported in France, Coca-Cola finally put
its public relations damage control into action.
• 24th
June, 1999 – Belgian health authorities end a 10 day ban on Coke
products.
• 25th
June, 1999 - CCE holds a news conference in Brussels denying that the
drinks posed any health risk.
• Douglas Ivester CEO and Chairman said that production would resume
immediately and that he expected Coca-Cola products to be back in Belgian
stores within two weeks. He also offered to pay medical costs if anyone fell
ill.
• Damage had already been done.
• Information was delayed and often misleading.
• People in Europe lost confidence in Coca-Cola products.
• At least 100 people became legitimately sick.

10. Predicament:
• Coca-Cola's financial performance suffered a major setback due to the
Belgian crisis.
• Negatve impact on Coca-Cola's overall second-quarter net income in the
fiscal year 1999, coming down by 21% to $942 million.
• Entire operation of destroying recalled products cost CCE $103 million
• 5% decline in the bottler's revenues.
• 6% decline in cash operating profit.

11. SWOT Fragmentation
Strengths:
• Strong brand recognition across the globe.
• Coca-Cola is the second most recognizable phrase after “Ok”.
• Company valued at $ 67000 Million in 2006.
• It has become a part of the World culture. Emotional attachment with the brand.
• Owns 4 of the top 5 soft drink brands in the world: Coca-Cola, Diet coke, Sprite
and Fanta.
• Largest manufacturer, distributor and marketer of non-alcoholic beverages.
• Operations supported by strong infrastructure owning 32 beverage concentrate
and syrup manufacturing plants. Also now manufactures juice concentrate.
• Aggressive branding and advertizing resulted in re-building a powerful image of
the company

12. Weaknesses:
• The proposition demonstrated the gap in capabilities of the company
officials as they issued statements contradicting one another.
• An apology to consumers came more than a week after the first public
reports that people had fallen ill. It was not until June 18,10 days after the
first schoolboy became dizzy and nauseated after drinking a Coke that top
company officials arrived in Belgium. And when Coke did begin to respond,
it tried to minimize the reports of illness.
• Also the company officials initially viewed the contamination to be a minor
problem clearly proving the lack of foresight.
• Being addicted to Coca-Cola also is a health problem, and has other side-
effects on teeth which is an issue for health care.

13. • Sheer carelessness, chaos, panic caused an incomplete transmission of
recall codes further worsening the case.
• All of these un-coordinated and disarrayed activities led to the ban on sales
of all of Coke’s products. The situation had worsened to the extent that the
health minister of France was quoted saying that “That a company so
expert in advertising and marketing should be so poor in
communicating on this matter is astonishing.”
• This definitely had an evident effect on the sales numbers and the revenue
of the company.

14. Opportunity:
• Coca-Cola’s bottling system also allows the company to take advantage of
the infinite growth opportunities around the world.
• The incident of the European children gave Coca-Cola the opportunity to
develop a system that will quickly respond to crisis.
• This incident also gave the company an opportunity to look into other
avenues of solutions and not to just rely on the first instinct.
• These opportunities improves the brand image and also will help increase
the affection for the company in the hearts of the people.

15. Threats:
• Such a crisis also has the competitors on their heels de-faming the brand
name as is evident with the advertisement campaigns amidst the cola wars.
• The consumers can easily switch to other beverages with little cost or
consequences.
• With Coca-Cola not responding neither quickly nor with its senior most
spokesperson it definitely threatened the company’s image as 74% of the
sales revenue was being generated from the European nations.
• Such an incident can also result in the withdrawal and even severing of
support from the co-branding partners where a good amount of revenue is
generated by means of sponsorship and partnership.
• With the company taking such a weak stand for the issue its also faced
dejection from the political and the legislative fronts of the locale.

16. Synopsis:
• The planning and implementation process of the SWOT analysis of the
problem clearly highlights the importance of a crisis management plan so
that major areas of vulnerability can be identified and therefore addressed.
• Response time is critical in minimizing damage to image and/or brand
image.
• Contingency planning is crucial to ultimate success in dealing with
opportunities and threats to companies.
• Moreover, because factors of impact vary from country to country and
culture to culture, it is very important that response plans are developed for
each location and include input from local management and public officials.
• We must understand that Perception does become Reality. In this case,
the company’s silence as they attempted to identify the source of the
problem led to a loss of public confidence.
• The longer the management delays a response, the more the opportunity
for permanent damage to the psychological bond that connects the
consumer to company image and reputation.

17. • The crisis management was more complicated in Coke’s crisis as the
bottler’s were not owned directly by the parent company.
• Thus the company needs some way to bring members of its top corporate
management together with other decision makers and other information
providers so that a response can be made public quickly.
• It took CCE an entire week to get Douglas Ivester, Coke’s CEO to Europe.
In a crisis of such a magnitude, the public looks for the No. 1 person to be
doing something significant.
• So while we do not know what Coke’s crisis management process was, it
appears not to have moved speedily.
• It is also important that the company have evolved a culture that in a crisis
like this will put foremost on the table the health of the customer.
• In coke’s instance the company had information about people who had
become ill weeks prior to these incidents. They should have released that
information. Instead they chose to not disclose the same thinking that it was
irrelevant.
• Even though you feel the information is irrelevant, one should get it out –
because that allows people who may think it is relevant to go through
whatever process they want to go through.

18. • It is imperative that the local personnel who have built a rapport and
credibility with the local customers and political units be included as a visible
part of the immediate response plan. In our case, there was a recent
change in the political leadership in Belgium, and the necessary rapport
between the company and the government had not been established.
• Another important consideration in critical incidents such as this is the
preservation of brand image. Thus nostalgic memories, product, confidence
of the people in the company and other such intangibles must be
maintained to preserve and protect the company and its long term position
in the market.