I love Coca-cola and have worked on their business in Asia. It's one of my favourite drinks and yet like McDonalds it's a brand I've tried to persuade of their potential for doing more good in the world than just sugared water/fast food. Their distribution in some cases is better than the United Nations world health organisation (WHO). It's a no brainer when selling the vitamins in sugared juice to suggest that instead of shouting about giving vitamins to healthy Hong Kong and Chinese kids who don't really need it, that instead Coca-cola could own the idea of distributing those vitamins to much more needy and remote places where Coca-cola merchandising makes it but essentials don't.
However I think the days of grasping great opportunities like that are over as we increasingly see that one after another the closely guarded secrets of 20th century material capitalism emerge into the daylight. Case in point is Coco-cola's secret recipe which may have just gone open source. A point not without irony when when noting the radio show it occurred on. This American life.
In case you're wondering about the above graphic, I have mentioned before that Coca-cola won where the U.S. marines failed in Vietnam. If that's still obscure for the younger ones out there here's the original seminal Chief of Police Nguyen Ngoc Loan execution picture. Another U.S. ideological warfare casualty.
