A potentially big problem, and the thread members appear AWOL!
Here's an excerpt from today's THE TIMES (U.K.)
What is true of US Presidents applies equally to international corporations in the era of global communications, as was demonstrated this week by Coca-Cola's sticky fiasco in Europe. The soft drinks giant is now struggling to control a corporate version of the Lewinsky scandal.
I called Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters just as the scare over tainted Coke was taking wing. More than 200 children had been treated for nausea, dizziness and stomach cramps, and European governments were fizzing. But the official response from Atlanta was as flat as last week's Fanta: nothing was wrong with the contents of Coca-Cola products in Europe, I was assured, and anyway the company had tracked down the problem to an unspecified "distribution channel" within Belgium. The Belgians were being a bit hysterical.
For days the company attempted damage limitation, insisting there was nothing for consumers to worry about. Explanations were belated and confusing, and what had started as a remote problem swiftly exploded into one of the worst crises in the brand's 113-year history. It took almost a week for the head of Coca-Cola to fly to Belgium. By then the company was already paralysed across much of Europe, and the countries imposing complete or partial bans on Coke products included Belgium, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain, Latvia, Saudi Arabia and even the Central African Republic.
The company's explanation for the tainted cans - "defective carbon monoxide" in one batch, fungicide for treating wooden pallets in another - has been greeted with scepticism, while European officials want to know why lists of potentially contaminated products were not released at once.
If every government scandal is measured against Watergate, then the Tylenol damage-limitation operation of 1982 still remains the measure for all subsequent corporate consumer crises. In that year, seven people died after consuming painkillers which had been laced with cyanide by a murderous extortionist. All Tylenol's products were recalled immediately and a crack PR crisis management team was brought in. Tylenol emerged from the crisis with sales higher than ever. |
