It’s great free publicity, but it is a dangerous game. Like a mouse in a cage with a leopard. In a way, you can call it corporate bullying, but then again, the Coca Cola company is used to stepping on ants, and on anyone who could hurt the share price of the stock. The ideal of Coke was well articulated in the 1920’s by Robert Woodruff when he coined the expression of Coke “within arm’s length of desire.” The definition, classic, of the American dream and its intrinsic relationship with democracy;but here a small company Sodastream has found a weak link in the chain mail: not only does it expose Coke but millions of other useless products – including Sodastreams- that are inherent in American marketing that we take fro granted from Kleenex to toothpaste. Coca Cola is not opposed to the Sodastream products per se, but rather the use of Coke in the marketing campaign as the epitomy of garbage and junk culture. If Sodastream was a traveling art exhibit, mocking Warhol’s paen to Coke as democratic- see quote below- they could get by it, but, legally it is injurious to Coke and Coke has the means to sue Sodastream into Chapter 11 without a hiccup or belch.
The Cage is a SodaStream exhibit whereby a metal cage is filled with plastic bottles and cans collected from dump sites. The Cage symbolizes the amount of plastic waste an average family uses over the course of either three. All this waste can be replaced by using one SodaStream carbonating bottle to make soda which lasts up to three years.
Sodastream…….
“It will take a lot more than a letter from a lawyer to shut me up,” says Sodastream CEO Daniel Birnbaum.
Sodastream (NASDAQ:SODA), the Israel-based company that manufactures home soda-making products, has received a cease-and-desist letter from The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) in South Africa. The letter was in relation to an outdoor marketing campaign, which Sodastream refers to as “the cage.” The exhibit features cans and bottles that Sodastream employees collect from dump sites which are placed in a giant cage used to illustrate how many bottles and cans a family uses over the course of either three or five years. Read More:http://www.forbes.com/sites/calebmelby/2012/06/18/new-cola-war-sodastream-refuses-to-comply-with-coca-cola-cease-and-desist-letter/
—SodaStream South Africa places a cage of plastic bottles at the busy OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, creating awareness to the amount of plastic bottles that can be saved by using a SodaStream home drinks maker.—Read More:http://pinterest.com/pin/244531454738038365/
ADDENDUM:
…“We think it is absolutely ridiculous,” Birnbaum says. “If they claim to have rights to their garbage, then they should truly own their garbage, and clean it up. Instead of getting a thank you for cleaning up, we’re getting a lawyer’s letter.”
In an email correspondence, Birnbaum also wrote: “We find it incredulous that Coke is now re-claiming ownership of the billions of bottles and cans that litter the planet with their trademarks. In that case, they should be sued in the World Court for all of the damage their garbage is causing.”…
—Read More:http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/06/02/the-coke-side-of-life/—Hamrah:The book quotes Henry Miller, too. In The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Miller wrote that “without a Coca-Cola life is unbearable.” Yet that’s part of a longer passage, a list that indicts the nightmarish America Miller found when he returned after years abroad. Here are a few other things he lists with Coca-Cola: “internal douche treatments, lousy photography, institutes of religion, faces lifted, warts removed, flatulence dissipated, business improved, limousines rented.” You should know better than to use something from a book called The Air-Conditioned Nightmare to bolster your brand. Clearly, Assouline and Coke don’t expect anybody to read that book. I’m positive they found that quote by searching Google for Coke quotes. Many interesting things have been said about Coke that the book leaves out, though perhaps not as willfully. Whe
�s the quote from Slavoj Žižek explaining the undefined “it” that Coke says it is?Sodastream went public in late 2010 and has been steadily increasing its share of the global soda market since. It has relied on campaigns focusing on environmental sustainability, health (Sodastream products use natural sugar or Stevia), and ease-of-use. Coca-Cola’s cease and desist letter therefore threatens Sodastream’s ability to communicate a key component of its value proposition. Read More:http://www.forbes.com/sites/calebmelby/2012/06/18/new-cola-war-sodastream-refuses-to-comply-with-coca-cola-cease-and-desist-letter/
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SodaStream then promptly exhibited the Cage over the weekend in Atlanta’s Centennial Park, “to show the citizens of Atlanta” the company said, “what the Coca-Cola executives do not want them, or the world, to see.” SodaStream then created ‘The Cage Challenge’ on Facebook, an online virtual cage it said, that nobody will be able to shut down.
The Coca-Cola company is not having an easy time of it these days. Recently, the state of California told Coke and PepsiCo that they must either change the composition of its caramel flavoring, or display a mandatory “known carcinogen” label on all of its cola products. Both companies subsequently agreed to modify their ingredients.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/327322#ixzz1yw9cVs3n
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“You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” —Andy Warhol.
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