Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Coca Cola and the Polar Bears


I wrote this message to the Coca Cola people today:
Dear Coca Cola Corporation,

I understand that the Coca Cola company was recently asked by Environmental Action www.environmental-action.org to support the US Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed listing of the polar bear as a threatened species. Your response, I have been informed, was, "When the cause is outside of our expertise, as is the case with polar bear conservation, we rely on others to approach us for financial support."

This is not a good answer. Coca Cola was not asked for money but for support -- what did you think Environmental Action was suggesting, that you bribe the US Fish and Wildlife Service? A letter from Coca Cola to F&W would be nice. A linked e-mail support form from your website to F&W would be nice. You already promote several worthy causes/issues on your website -- literacy, education, CO2 emissions, cycling -- you know how this is done.

Environmental Action is now specifically requesting that you link to their send-an-email-to-save-the-polar-bear page, http://www.environmental-action.org/enviroaction.asp?id=2081&id4=HP. That is *really* simple thing for you to do and would take your web techies about 4 minutes, including time for coffee.

I would be really happy to see Coca Cola do this, especially since Coke has associated itself with polar bears for over a decade. This alone would make you something of an 'expert' on polat bears. Your company has done pretty well out of the association but the bears haven't benefitted much so far. Time, I think, to give back.

Sincerely,

HotFlash

BTW, possibly not the biggest Coke drinker on the planet, but we get through 24 cans of diet Coke in a week at my house. It adds up. But it doesn't have to be Coke, you see.


If you like polar bears and have a few minutes to spare, drop the folks at Coke a line via Environment Action.

(image from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and they have more.)

1 Comments:

Blogger A-Gran said...

"This is not a good answer. Coca Cola was not asked for money but for support -- what did you think Environmental Action was suggesting, that you bribe the US Fish and Wildlife Service?"

Bwah hah hah! You're right though. I don't even see how this is an issue for Coke. As you point out, they've used a Polar Bear as a spokesman (spokesanimal?) for years and honestly, how could there be a downside to aligning themselves with a group dedicated to keeping their fucking spokesman (spokesanimal?) alive? Can you think of one single person or group who would think badly about Coca-Cola for this? "Oh Hell NO! Polar Bears??? Now they've gone too far! It's nothing but Fanta in this house from now on." I'm not a huge fan of 'awareness,' but I can't see how bending to this would have been anything but positive.

January 23, 2011 1:05 AM  

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