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Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer

by Ailish M. Nic Phaidin
Brevard Technical Journal

Politics anywhere is a blood sport. Business is sometimes also a blood sport. My own profession, that of Public Relations Consulting, can also be a blood sport, if the hounds aren't kept from the door before the rabbit bolts. So, when one combines politics, business, particularly that of the global corporate ilk, marketing, and sales together; all without the acumen of the Public Relations Department, one frequently gets a hugely successful and vastly profitable enterprise - momentarily.

I'll refer to the CEO of such a global corporate entity as the "hunter" and the "hounds" as those multi-layered gatekeepers who pounce on any poor hapless devil of a lower-level manager or lower-level worker (read: rabbit slash whistleblower) who raises a snout above the parapet to offer a bit of sane common sense advice on any subject matter.

In late March in London such seems to have been the case. The Coca-Cola Company has just completed such a marketing disaster. They took London Thames faucet water, bottled it as "pure, still" water and referred to by Coca-Cola executives as "as pure as bottled water gets". Then, in a stroke of genius, that only a member of the multi-layered gatekeepers could conjure up, they called it "Dasani" and charged 95 pence (sterling) for a half liter bottle.

You should know that a half-liter of London Thames faucet water costs 0.03 pence (sterling) which makes for a very nice 3,000% mark-up. Now, London Thames faucet water isn't bad stuff, except that in the case of the Coca-Cola Company's "Dasani" "pure, still" water, it contained illegally high levels of bromate. It has been reported that the bromate formed whilst the production process for bottling the water was in progress at Coke's London plant. Maybe I shouldn't touch the issue of the bottling process? Bromate is a chemical which the British Food Standards Agency has said may lead to an increased risk of cancer.

That's the queer kind of "as pure as bottled water gets."

According to the London Thames Water Company, the mains supply faucet water has passed more than 99.9% of quality checks, which makes it one of the purest drinking waters in the world.

The Coca-Cola Company is now facing a 15m pound sterling marketing disaster. That's the price tag on their high-profile publicity campaign. That doesn't include any fines, litigation or awards resulting from any litigation - civil or criminal - that may result from this little debacle. Nor does it cover the cost to the Coke company in prestige, credibility, legitimacy or corporate governance. According to reports, the Coca-Cola Company had expected to make 52m pounds sterling on this product in its first year. They are now in the process of withdrawing all 500,000 bottles from the shelves of shops all over the U.K.

You might like to know that the bottled water market in the U.K. is estimated to be worth more than 1.5bn pounds sterling a year. This market is also estimated to be growing at a rate of 20% annually.

Why companies in this day and age of instant communications forget that as well as having gatekeepers, they also have whistleblowers? I have no evidence or knowledge to assume or assert that the outing of the information that the Coca-Cola Company had bottled purified faucet water as "pure, still" water was the result of a whistleblower. How the details emerged is not really relevant for the purposes of this piece. What is relevant is the assumption by the Coca-Cola Company that they could indeed bottle London Thames Company faucet water and sell it as something else.

At my most optimistic, I am assuming that Coke's executives did not bother to consult with their Public Relations Counsel. If they did, and that Counsel did nothing to deter such utterly unethical, not to mention totally inept, (how in God's name did they expect to get away with such an abomination??) business practice, then the profession of Public Relations has suffered a huge gap in credibility.

On a scale of 1 to 10 in regard to good corporate governance, I can only offer a weak and weaker apology to the unfortunate and unsuspecting public in the international marketplace whose faith in the ethical standards and business practice of U.S. businesses has once again been stabbed in the back by the mad pursuit of mammon.

Coke's shameless and unethical business dealings in regard to this 'product', coupled with all the recent U.S. corporate governance debacles, has received widespread publicity in the European and Far Eastern press. I've not seen or heard anything about it in the U.S. press, which could mean I've just missed it.

However, for the U.S. exporter and potential exporter, the Coke mess means that we will have to work harder and with even more ethical standards to gain the confidence of our overseas customers. If your Public Relations Department is not doing its job, then they deserve to have the hunter and the hounds wade into their cozy cartel of psuedo professionalism and skin them alive with a blunt knife.

Not only should you hire the sharpest of ethical people in all your departments, but your Public Relations Department should, in all instances, be above reproof. In this case, the Coca-Cola Company wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, and some of our blood has been spilled in this sport.