How Coca-cola conquers the world.

Everyone knows Coca-cola. From the biggest town to the smallest village, the white-red written advertisements are everywhere. How does the Coca-cola Company manages to conquer the whole world?

CEO and Chairman of the company in 2001, Doug Daft explains. Before, Coca-cola’s strategy was “Think Global. Act Local”, which clearly shows the aspect of globalization. But, according to Mr. Doug Daft, making decisions at the top of the company and execute them local is not the best option. He prefers “Think Local. Act Local”. This means decentralizing the company and having more faith in the local individuals. He wants to achieve this by meeting the consumers in their own communities, their own houses and then talk with them. Instead of mark out the communities, we have to watch to the original ones.

I found another interesting example on how The Coca-cola Company adapts his product to different cultures.

It takes place in Brazil, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Every year, they organise the famous Folkloric Parintins Festival. This festival is a singing and dancing competition between two teams, a red one and a blue one. Coca-cola is the main sponsor of this event.

After a few years, they discovered that their consumers were mainly supporters from the red team. The blue team didn’t want to drink Coca-cola, because of its red colour. They drunk Pepsi, which has a blue color. Therefore, Coca-cola made a local change: they also made a blue bottle. Problem solved.

By this example we can see that thinking and acting local, even with a very simple change, is very important to stay competitive and making progress.

Lara Moons.

The MonroeSt.Journal
Accidental Thinking