“Global Collaboration in Coca-Cola”
Summary of Key Talks
Have more than 300 bottlers – how do you manage that? Collaboration and team work are crucial. This was from the start of the company pretty much. Understanding what Coke brings to the table and what the bottlers have to do. The company is organized around:
1. Franchise leadership
2. Consumer leadership – how to create demand in the market place – crucial to the business
3. Customer and commercial leadership – the proper execution of initiatives through all the supply chain.
How do they collaborate with others?
Know how to do this as their history shows:
1. Collaborate with artists – they look for optimistic messages so that the consumer can relate to. The character of Santa Clause was created by Coke and an artist called Sam Blum a hundred years ago.
2. Free sampling and coupons was a brilliant move, with partners.
Recently launched a new test for a “fountain machine” – the consumer can get on the spot a mix of different ingredients. The technology bring to the table of brining vanilla, cherry or whatever – the customer can dial this on demand and also add some functional ingredients. This will also change the machines and the supply chains. They worked with a wide variety of people. First three-four weeks show good interest from the consumers. This is a disruptive innovation that required quite a lot of people from inside and outside the company. How do you manage IP when working with people from outside the company? A whole topic by itself.
Moving from glass bottles to plastic bottles was easy. Going to aluminum bottles – the next step. It is actually difficult to manufacture a bottle as opposed to a can that has straight “sides”. It needs to be done by those responsible for the tooling of bottling – these would be external companies – and Coke created this in collaboration with them. People love it. Collaborated with suppliers and artists…
What is new today?
1. Resources are very precious today; want o leverage the value chain of others too. The company launched a zero calorie sweetener, comes from the Stevia plant, they found way how to use this without the aftertaste together with Cargill. Found a “happy bonding” between the two companies.
2. Announced a joint venture with Illy for ready to drink coffee cans – three brands (macchiato, espresso and…) launched first in Europe.
Look for the “bubbles clip” showing Coke as a way to connect people….
Key areas for innovation in the next few years – interested in the still beverages area – juice, coffee – start to build the strength there. Functional ingredients is something that the consumers are demanding. Supplements, etc.
Although they don’t have large R&D groups were and are able to innovate.
The two main criteria when think about future initiatives – can they be differentiated and can they make money.
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