By the turn of the century, Chandler’s prediction was proving correct: Coke was already available in Canada, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, France and England. The end of World War II completed the company’s global conquest, with the taste for Coke having been exported to the liberated world by American soldiers. Today, Coke is sold in over 200 countries.

In this millennium, Coke is focusing a great deal of its attention on promoting itself in less-developed markets and Asia. An article in the New York Times points out that if Coke consumption in China – which banned the product from Mao’s takeover in 1949 until 1978 – could rise from 7 liters per person to 121 (the average per capita consumption in the Philippines), Coke’s market share would expand by a whopping 40% (January 28, 2001). This would be good news for a company that came through 2000 a bit worse for wear, having suffered an unfavorable settlement in a race discrimination suit, layoffs, a contamination scare in Europe, the departure of its CEO and the failure to complete its purchase of Quaker Oats and the Gatorade brands. As of this writing, Coke’s share price sits at a 52 week low. These setbacks have brought the company’s value down almost 13% from 1999 to the end of 2000 to $72.5 billion, bringing it within the sights of Microsoft, which, at $70.2 billion dollars, is the world’s second most valuable brand name.

Africa as a Model of Branding Success in the Third World

Coke’s success on the African continent ought to stand as a model of how the company will proceed to build its sales in its fledgling Asia-Pacific Group, which targets 3.2 billion potential consumers compared to Africa’s 1.2 billion. The average African drinks two servings of the company’s products per month, twice as much as the average Asian. Despite Africa’s poverty, raging civil wars and incredible health problems, Coke is sold throughout the continent with the exception of Libya, Morocco and the Sudan. The company has managed to find a presence in hotspots such as Rwanda, Burundi, Angola (where it has just completed a new US$33M bottling plant) and Zimbabwe.

Coke is South Africa’s most admired brand name, available freely in Johannesburg’s posh malls as well as in the hinterlands where people must walk for miles down dirt roads to buy a Coke from the “spazza” shops that sell rural Africans their basic goods. Here, it is the undisputed leader in overall brand awareness (42%). Its nearest competitor in brand awareness is the state run phone company, Telkom, which follows Big Red at a mere 28%. In an October 2000, survey of South Africans, 91% of respondents in urban areas mentioned Coke as the number one top-of-mind soft drink brand. Coke also owns its nearest brand competitors, Fanta and Sprite.

Coke’s success in Africa has been due to its savvy advertising as well as its ubiquitous involvement in local community life. City dwellers in South Africa cannot fail to notice the Coke signs installed in every shop and roadside stand, but Coke has taken the initiative to reach poorer South Africans in rural areas as well. To this end it has initiated sports sponsorships, sports development, entrepreneurial development, scholarships and education projects. It has also relentlessly found ways to get its products trucked into even the most remote corners of Africa and has cultivated a reputation for corporate honesty and openness that has won the respect of African businesspeople from Cape Town to Madagascar. If Coke can succeed here, Asia ought to be a snap.

Africanizing the Quintessential American Brand

Coke, the ultimate American product, manages to assimilate itself into utterly foreign cultures by utilizing local advertising campaigns that brilliantly link its products to people’s aspirations and passions.

Throughout the late nineties the South African advertising agency of Sonnenberg Murphy Leo Burnett (SMLB) helped promote the drink to the townships and villages of Coke through emotively linking Coke with Africa’s great obsession: soccer. It also introduced a locally famous commercial, shot in Morocco (ironically one of the few countries in the world yet to enjoy Coke) that likens drinking your first Coke to your first kiss. Lately, SMLB has linked Coke to the African concept of seriti (community respect) by airing commercials that show an African boy become a man of stature in his township by selling Coke.

These initiatives have helped make Coke an enduring symbol of Africa and its number one brand. They also prevented Coke’s main US rival, Pepsi, from gaining any market share in South Africa at all. A few years ago Pepsi appeared on the scene with an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at the African consumer. Now it is once again unavailable, a victim of Coke’s utter control over this segment of the marketplace.

Ron Irwin is a brand consultant and writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has lectured extensively on brand management at the University of Cape Town School of Management Studies and to local companies. Find him on the web at ronaldirwin.co.za.