Saturday, February 25, 2006

I'd like to buy the world a Coke...


...but the world already has it! Over the last week I've been researching Coca-Cola - very interesting and unbelievable. 1 billion Coke products are consumed each day. One friggin' billion.
Some of my encounters with the all-American company abroad:
  • Nepal: Monks using it as offering to some Tibetan deity.
  • Guatemala: Met a hippy from Spain (Do they call 'em hippies in Spain?) who blamed Coca-Cola for more than just rotting teeth. She said the company backs the killing of union leaders in Colombia. The materials I used to research didn't make any mention of this, but there is a web site dedicated to it - Killer Coke.

No matter how out of the way you are, if you are thirsty someone will probably hand you a Coke. Coke claims to be in 200 countries world-wide. This just in- there are currently 192 countries on Earth.

Now that is marketing!

2 comments:

Spider Girl said...

I have a picture somewhere of a donkey I saw in the medinas of Fes, Morocco--the most medieval place I've ever been---it was loaded down with crates of Coca-Cola.

For some reason, I don't like the way Coke tastes at home and avoid it, but when I'm travelling it sometimes gets me through the day. Coke, or orange-flavoured Fanta.

Kelsey said...

I just finished up a story on Coke and if you still have the pic of the Coke toting donkey I may be able to use it for my column. Let me know if you are interested.