Coca-Cola’s just-announced holiday campaign to supposedly protect Arctic polar bear habitat – highlighted by the company changing its iconic red cans to white – is ending, with the company killing off its new packaging two months earlier than planned.
No, Coke hasn’t seen the light on its disguised support for the global warming hoax. The images of polar bears will instead appear on redesigned red cans, after many consumers mistakenly grabbed the white cans believing they were selecting the silver-canned Diet Coke.
For example, the Wall Street Journal reported that in recent days about a half-dozen customers at an Atlanta deli returned their opened cans of “polar bear” Coke because they believed they had chosen Diet Coke. They were given the sugar-free colas without additional charge.
And other classic Coke drinkers said their sodas tasted differently in the white cans than they did in the red ones. The Journal noted a YouTube video in which a blindfolded woman taste tested classic Coke in both colored cans, and then held up the polar bear can and proclaimed, “This is the funky one!”
The ad campaign promoted the alleged need to protect polar bears, and Coca-Cola plans to donate $3 million to environmental pressure group World Wildlife Fund. But as NLPC has reported, the extent of WWF’s polar bear habitat “protection” only goes so far as their lobbying and litigation efforts to stop the increase of greenhouse gases emitted from the burning of fossil fuels for energy. In other words, the entire planet is their “habitat” and humans must stop burning coal, oil and natural gas for their selfish energy needs.
Meanwhile WWF, a global organization, hypocritically continues to spend millions of dollars annually on travel for staff and donors. Among the group’s stated beliefs are that airline travel is among the greatest causes of anthropogenic global warming, because of the greenhouse gas emissions from burning jet fuel.
That Coke customers’ money was diverted to WWF for its climate activism offended a number of them, which they expressed on Coca-Cola’s official blog (typos and Internet lingo have been corrected):
· FYI, global warming has been unmasked as a scam. Coke jumping on the bandwagon to appease environmental activists is not my idea of good business. I will not be buying Coke for the holidays in protest of the move. I am positive many more people will follow. Most Americans are sick of this issue being shoved down our throats by politicians and now we have to endure it from a major corporation during the holidays? My money will be better spent elsewhere.
· Since I despise the WWF, I will not be purchasing any Coke in the white cans. This is not a good marketing program; the time is over for pandering to global warming and climate change believers. It’s a hoax, and your marketing research is flawed.
· I am so disappointed that Coca-Cola has bought into the hoax of manmade global warming. You make a fine product, but you have been duped into thinking you are helping the environment by giving tons of money to that scam artist WWF. Scaring little kids and gullible adults into thinking that all the polar bears are going to drown – shame on WWF and everyone else like them.
Similarly, Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh – who lived for 20 years under communism in Romania – wrote in the Canada Free Press about Coke’s support of WWF and similar organizations, “Every time global organizations and companies use global governance to tell us how to live, how to be better stewards of the environment, we are losing our freedom to govern ourselves.”
Laughably, but unsurprisingly, Coke has put a positive spin on the rollout of the revised (red) polar bear can, calling it “Arctic Home Phase II” and “the next collectible can featuring the white polar bears on the iconic Coca-Cola red backdrop. Consider these red cans an early holiday gift for collectors!” Problems related to the white can are not mentioned.
Rick Aristotle Munarriz of The Motley Fool called the white cans the company’s “biggest marketing blunder since New Coke,” and forecasted slow growth.
“This is just a flat-out boneheaded move by Coca-Cola,” Munarriz wrote. “Loyalists know the Coca-Cola color scheme. Regular Coke is red. Diet Coke is silver. Caffeine-free Coke is gold. White really is too close a kissing cousin to silver, and it’s easy to see why folks grabbing the cans at convenience stores, delis, or perhaps even their own refrigerators may make the honest mistake.”
Considering the off-putting nature of Coke’s foray into the phony global warming issue – which threatens to make scarce the cheap, efficient energy resources that humans need to live healthier lives – the company ought to concern itself more with its intentional sins.
Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center.