Coke's water campaign in Europe goes off course
The march to globalism can veer off course. Coca Cola, whose Dasani bottled water brand, had run from zero to 2nd most popular in the US in five years, wanted to repeat the magic in Europe. Late last year, they started to roll out an assault on the European water market, staring in the UK and then crossing the channel to challenge Nestle and Danone on their home turf. The UK version, like the American version, is not filled with actual spring water but with filtered municipal water. (Coke announced that it would use spring water for the brand on the more demanding Continent.)
But, as another in a series of marketing disasters that have plagued the company, the campaign is now on hold. A few weeks ago, all Dasani bottled water was recalled in the UK, after Coke's own labs found that the water had an excessively high level of bromate, a chemical associated with an increased chance of cancer. The bromate came from the addition of calcium chloride in the water, required in the UK.
The British tabloids had a field day, with headlines like "Cancer Water Axed". The Guardian ("Things Get Worse with Coke ", 3/20/2004) laid it all out with wicked glee:
So now the full scale of Coke's PR disaster is clear. It goes something like this: take Thames Water from the tap in your factory in Sidcup, Kent; put it through a purification process, call it "pure" and give it a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre; in the process, add a batch of calcium chloride, containing bromide, for "taste profile"; then pump ozone through it, oxidising the bromide - which is not a problem - into bromate - which is. Finally, dispatch to the shops bottles of water containing up to twice the legal limit for bromate (10 micrograms per litre).
The question is now whether the brand will be scrapped entirely in Europe, or if Coke will try again. As the Wall Street Journal reports ("Coke Tables Dasani Brand in Europe", 3/25/2004),
Without Dasani now in Europe, Coke will turn to some of its smaller water brands there, such as Malvern in the U.K. and BonAqua in Germany. Nonetheless, without Dasani, Coke will have a tough time building a sizeable water business in Europe, given that it is starting with a market share of less than 2%.
For Coke, the plan to create a global brand in water as well as soda is stopped dead in its tracks. For now, Nestle and Danone get to maintain their European dominance.
