Coca Cola: What Happened?

Coca-Cola: What Happened?

Coca-Cola is and has been a powerhouse in the soft drink industry since the beginning of the market in the late 1900’s. Despite having small beginnings as a cure-all marketed to a local audience, Coke has become a brand that is recognized the world over, as well as an icon of American history and a flagship of capitalism. During its rise to fame and fortune Coke was widely enjoyed by minority consumers and decided to market heavily towards this consumer group (its obvious target market). Despite having a strong interest in the minority community as consumers, Coke has suffered many setbacks in its inclusion of minorities in the workplace and has faced a very large and public lawsuit, decrying the unjust and unfair treatment that minorities received in the workplace.

Coca-Cola is known for its unchanging formulas for its soft drinks, as well as the limited number of original recipes that they have successfully created. Instead Coke executives decided to make the most of what they had and put their effort into marketing, allowing the status quo to remain essentially the same as they tried more and more ways to keep profits growing, while maintaining the same production and distribution models. It seems that this same stagnation that plagued the company’s vision for the future also plagued the inner workings of the company. According to the text, the corporate officers at Coca-Cola were known as nothing more than “Good-ole boys” from the University of Georgia. Unfortunately this resistance to diversity continued to plague the company until real changes were made in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, spawned by a massive lawsuit that ended up costing the company more than 200 million dollars in settlements and litigation fees. What went so wrong in the corporate offices that they were forced to settle for such a large amount? The answer is surprisingly simple.

As it has been said Coca-Cola was predominately run by a non-diverse group of white middle aged males, most of the minorities in the company were underpaid in relation to whites who shared the same responsibilities, and there were very few in the corporate offices. To make matters worse, often times when concerns were brought to the company by employees (current and former) and leaders from the minority community they were simply ignored, rather than seriously considered in the hopes that the problems would simply go away. In order to curb the tide of the public’s growing concern over the diversity problems plaguing the company, Coke decided to fund the anti-apartheid movement in south Africa, as well as hiring an African American man, Carl Ware, to the board as the co-chair of The Diversity Advisory council for the company. This solution proved to be temporary at best, and although Ware spoke out in defense of the company and its practices, his placement in the company seemed to be too little too