Coca-Cola brands "must increasingly be and do" before earning right to serve communities says VP of global connections
"Our brands must increasingly be and do before they earn the right to serve," Coca-Cola's vice president of global connections, Ivan Pollard has told an audience at the Cannes Festival of Creativity while discussing the social change the company has attempted to engineer over the last six decades.
Joined on stage by Jonathan Mildenhall, vice president for creative at Coca-Cola, the pair examined a number of social campaigns that the company has run from different countries in its history.
The Real Work that Matters talk aimed to highlight how Coke was attempting to further the Content2020 initiative that It launched in 2011 to use online for content marketing.
The pair discussed real stories that the company's brands had become involved in using social purpose in order to make the world a better place, Pollard explained.
Mildenhall said that ColaCola was in a powerful position and that its brand teams saw the "huge creative opportunity" in telling stories with a social purpose.
The first work he highlighted was the use of Mary Alexander as its face of advertising in 1955, where she became the first black woman to front the brand. This happened around the same time that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white person, sparking a huge social response that revolutionised the black movement in America forever.
Another message of inclusion, Bench, featuring white and black males enjoying a Coke while sitting together on a segregation bench, but integrated rather than divided, and in contact with one another, was an advert that Mildenhall described as his favourite work by the company.
"Work that matters isn't always about racial harmony or integration - it's about having a brand that isn't afraid to comment on popular culture and making a point that serves," explained Pollard.
He would later add; "Real work matters in the real world. These stories highlight the work that matters...what's important here is not just the storytelling, which is lovely, but it's the brand behaviour. Our brands must behave differently inside the communities we serve... In other words our brands must increasingly be and do before they earn the right to serve."
Also highlighted was the famous "I'd like to Give the World a Coke' advert and the Diet Coke Break advert from the Nineties, as well as an online video highlighting a recycling campaign partnered by Coke which saw 188 people in the slums of Brazil recycling 280 tonnes a month of rubbish.