Coke is starting a campaign in honour of its mascot - the polar bear! Coca Cola has pledged to donate $100,000 dollars to World Wildlife Fund this holiday season to help protect polar bears and their arctic habitat. Sounds awesome, right? I thought so too until I noticed an asterix after the $100,000 on the site, so I scrolled down and found this:"If 1,400,000 are entered at iCoke.ca between 12:00:00am EDT November 1 – 11:59:59pm EST December 31, 2008, Coca-Cola Ltd. will make a $100,000 contribution to polar bear conservation efforts. PIN under cap = 500 iCoke Coins. PIN expires November 1, 2009."
Pardon me? An ultimatum? How ridiculous is that? If you crunch the numbers, then Coke is only donating $0.06 per 591mL bottle or 12 pack of Coke sold!
Coca Cola is a large corporation and can definitely afford to be donating $100,000 to World Wildlife Fund without consumer support, never mind having to put a condition on the donation so that they can afford the donation. Coke is trying to generate good press for themselves by what appears to be a charitable gift, when in reality they are still making a profit off this deal and saving face. I think if people become aware of the conditions placed on this donation, there will be negative backlash against the Coke brand which will ultimately hurt the brand and potentially even the World Wildlife Fund brand also.
For shame, Coke, for shame.
[UPDATE: Analysis of post-campaign now posted here!]
1 comment:
I completely agree with what you said about Coke being able to make the donation without putting forth those kinds of stipulations on the campaign. In fact, I'd personally have a better opinion of the company if they did that than I do now (and my opinion of them wasn't the best before reading this as it was).
I don't get a genuine feeling from this campaign which is really too bad given the cause that should be benefiting from it. More than anything I almost feel like I'm being guilted into buying their products just so I can help the polar bear and that really is a shame.
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