Coca-Cola and Polar Bear Conservation
by Joyce Li ~ November 23rd, 2011. Filed under: Uncategorized.
A few weeks ago during Comm 101 Tutorial, we discussed Coca-Cola’s support of the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic Home campaign. In short, Coca-Cola is donating 2 million dollars to the WWF over five years, and match consumer donations up to 1 million dollars until March of 2012. Also, they will be changing the colour of their red cans to white in honour of the polar bears that are ever-present in their advertisements, to raise awareness for the campaign.
Recently, they have donated $10,000 to the Polar Bear Alert Program in Manitoba to further promote polar bear conservation.
While all this is indeed generous, I can’t help but think that its all just a marketing strategy, masked by taking on an “eco-friendly” and philanthropic image. Coca-Cola is a massive corporation and one of the most successful companies in the world. 2 million dollars is practically pocket change for them. As for the colour change of their cans, it won’t cost too much to implement, but will indubitably boost sales as consumers like new, limited edition bottles and cans (ie: the Olympic coke bottles, those turned out to be very successful). And the $10,000 donation to the Polar Bear Alert Program? If $2 million is pocket change, then $10,000 is pathetic. Sure, $10,000 may help the PBAP in their operations, but I believe that if Coca-Cola really cared for the welfare of arctic animals and not just their own company, they would donate much more, especially to WWF.