We had the CEO of Coke India, Mr. Atul Singh, visiting us on campus today. Khemka was full as usual, with people billowing in from all entrances, accompanied by books and bags, and as for sections E,F,G and H, a tired expression accompanied them as well as they walked in. No, I am not going to summarize what he said, nor am I going to give my perspective on what he said. I guess someone or the other would 'minutize' it, and if not, I guess there were enough people in there to fill in those who did not manage to come in for the session. In a nutshell, he spoke of how Coke perceived the Indian market and how our predominantly rural market posed new advertising challenges as such for the beverage industry, in general, and the Coke brand of products in particular.
Towards the end however, he spoke of the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives undertaken by Coke. Therein he spoke of how they were into rain water harvesting, providing water to schools, restoration of the Sarai Bawari at Amer, not to mention the natural calamity relief and aid work . He mentioned Coke's vision and plan of replenishing every drop of groundwater they take by the end of this year. An extremely commendable move indeed by one of the world's largest brands, whose every move commands almost the maximum number of eyeball attention. I guess such moves can prompt plenty of other industry players to do their bit for society.
But in the midst of all this, I was struck by a sense of deja vu. Just a few days ago, in one of our accounting classes, there was discussion on how Starbucks was into huge CSR initiatives. I won't go into the specifics of the discussion we had back then, but today's mention of CSR by another beverage company, put me in mind of the previous event, wherein we had seen the Starbucks site displaying its CSR initiatives in South America. I just wonder whether CSR is the new bug that has bitten the world of large conglomerates? Or is it that given the present economic situation, the glaring need to look elsewhere for economic stimulus and growth, has resulted in atypical avenues being targeted? Either way, I guess something good can only come out of the whole exercise. What say?
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Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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1 comments:
What follows is important and what i am about to write comes from a lot of inside thinking and outside discussion:
1) First and the foremost-I believe our actions should be guided by a sense of care and goodness for others. Profit should be a reward for such actions.
2) But unfortunately in today's capitalist society it is the otherway round-actions are guided by profit and not by a sense of care and goodness for others.
3) Just to compensate for this SIN companies are coming with social initiatives(so called CSR). But as I have seen such initiatives are nothing more than an eyewash.They are more to be advertised and boasted than to be implemented seriously.
4) It brings a lot of pain to me that companies like coke have come to the top-they sell products which have no positive use for man kind.But when your actions are guided by the pursuit of profit then such products are not hard to make/sell.
Baba Ram Dev has rightly coined the cliche "thanda matlab toylet cleaner"
5) May be 10 to 20 years down the line some "great" company will start selling slow poision (in pursuit of profit)-by some exotic name (nector of amazon) and advertise the same with the help of our cricketers and actors. That will start the end of mankind.
6) By the way cold drink, pizza, burger, etc. are no better than slow poison.
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