Petite Etoile, 4/05

We talked in class about how it takes so many millions of dollars in advertising and developing and marketing or whatever else it is they do to get there products on the shelves in a grocery store. But this got me thinking… what kind of terrible things does a company have to do to get its stuff into snack machines in colleges and highschools and near movie theaters? And not only that, but what does it have to do to get it’s products in EVERY snack machine in the country? I mean it’s a pretty crazy idea that coca cola has gone so far. I was at a conference this weekend at UCF about activism and grassroot organizing and I went out to get a drink and every single machine around, which since UCF is massive their were like 5 in the same hallway, were all filled with coke products. And its not just the coke, diet coke, coke zero, cherry coke and other obviously coke products that are from coke. But even if you wanted to buy a water, its dasani…made by coke, or a fruit drink, its Fuze… also made my coke, or an energy drink, its Full Throttle… also made by coke. I wouldn’t be surprised if coke secretly made snicker bars and trail mix too. It’s just ridiculous how they have completely monopolized the beverage market and our government does nothing. Isn’t that still illegal anymore? And then I went back inside to our meeting and someone mentioned something about the Killer Coke Campaign. I still haven’t had the time to fully look into what that’s all about, but it sure doesn’t sound like the commercials of good time old American smiling fuzzy feeling coca cola in a glass bottle with your family type image they’re trying to push. And it sure doesn’t sound like something our country should allow, much less endorse, and put in every corner of every school from kindergarden all the way to college. Just because you see coke everywhere and it just seems natural to see coke everywhere we tend to forget that someone somewhere is making money every single time someone buys one. Take a second to try and calculate how many cokes are in one machine, how many machines are on one campus… one city… one state… the entire country. It’s mind blowing. Just because it’s accepted doesn’t mean it’s right. And just because we don’t see the abuse happening, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And even if we aren’t aware of the atrocities we are supporting doesn’t mean they aren’t real and we aren’t responsible.