YouSaid · the spoken record

James Quincey

lines on the record: 47
first: 2023-05-24
most recent: 2023-05-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, there was a filing cabinet. It's like the matrix. There's a filing cabinet with other stuff in it. I didn't look at the other stuff.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I had a bet of memory, I would. The formula for Coca-Cola lives in a safe to which only a very few people have access. I went in there once just because I became CEO. I have to go in with someone else, looked at the piece of paper, and more or less instantly forgot everything about it when I walked out the room.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've become a part of the sad or not so sad train to trying the swimming in cold water. I had to Google how fast I was and see whether it was any good and I was really slow. Unbelievably slow, like right down at Novice. And I'm like, okay, but it was fun.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, everything can be fun. There can be times when you do really cool stuff. I mean, like I got a lot out of all the AI marketing recently, but there can be cool stuff on the family side. Like, you know, spending time with family and friends seeing them grow and achieve stuff, or even for yourself, going off and learning something new or trying something new. Even if you're terrible at it, just trying something new and learning something new.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you choose a career that has more time or whatever, more money, less money, more status, less, you have to be comfortable with that choice within your 100% bar chart.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My first piece of advice, or my main piece of advice that then comes with a caveat, is Find something you really love doing. Sometimes people take jobs because they think it gives them status or money. But I feel in the long run, you're likely to rise to the top or be happier doing the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. If you don't love what you're doing, the chances of getting out of bed early and working insanely hard just go down in my mind. Certainly do over time. Having said that, the caveat is you need to be okay with the life, the choices that implies. Sometimes people talk about work-life balance. It's not a balance between work and life. Work is part of life. Your life is composed of a whole set of things and it's 100% bar chart. You can't have more life and more time available. It's a question of district.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm somewhat European in that sense. It's like there needs to be some boundaries. It's a 24-7 job. There also needs to be some downtime. You need to be able to walk away. Not always. And if there's a crisis, sometimes you're the only person who can decide and it's 24-7 literally. But you have to be able to walk away and do something else.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um... Life is a marathon. You can have periods of working insanely hard, but it's hard to live your whole life at that pace. And so, you know, I think the pendulum swings between working hard and working insanely hard because you can keep it up forever. Life is not a set of sprints. It's a marathon. Now, some people can run a lot faster than other people, but you've got to pace yourself, particularly when you get to be kind of CEO, I think.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm kind of mission motivated in the sense of I really want to do the thing. I have to feel like I really want to do the thing. Whatever that thing ends up being, whether it be, I think we, for example, code, we put code back on a growth trajectory over the last number of years or I want to learn to be good at X. I normally start off with the perspective of how hard can it be? And then, of course, you find out that most things are much harder than you think and you're not very good at them. But occasionally you find some things that you are both good at and you enjoy or they don't have to be the same. They're two. It's a Venn diagram that doesn't necessarily overlap between enjoyment and good at. But I experiment with lots of different things.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've read a few books lately on the fiction side. I read a book called Clara and the Sun, which is kind of an in the future novel about the relationship between robots and us. It's very different. It's a Japanese British writer. On the kind of more businessy side, I tend to gossip for more of the history ones. The last couple I read one of them called Money for Nothing, which was a history of the South Sea bubble crisis, which I recommend people. The other one was the Lords of Finance, because I think I'm very intrigued and interested in the fact that ultimately the underlying structural changes, they always win in the end. Things can go up and down, but the profound structural stuff. In the end, wins out, which was ultimately the story of both these books.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like learning. I am probably slowly becoming more old school in the sense that I prefer to read it than to watch a podcast or a talk, but I'm slowly moving with the times. But I do have to say I still have a yearning for the tactile nature of”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And whether it's investors, Media, stakeholders, everyone has a point of view and directs it at the CEO. So you are much more fragmented and you have way more stakeholders than anyone else in the organization. And it's kind of a shock when you get there.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's one part of the CEO that you never find out until you get there. And the way I describe it is if you think about an organization, let's just use the classic idea of an organizational pyramid. It's a big pyramid. And most people think, okay, you spend your years working your way up the pyramid. And eventually you'll get the apex of the pyramid. And in a simple way, everyone in the organization will work for you. And every general manager in the job, general manager job in the pyramid kind of how people working for them, but they see their way to the APIs. But then when you get to the apex, something different happens. You find out that there's another pyramid, except where it's upside down. You're at the bottom, at the apex of the upside down pyramid, and above you are zillions of people trying to give you a point of view who want your time. And that doesn't happen to any other person in the organization.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't need to whip out the management books, but it's the contrast, the shouting, and screaming. So it's like, okay, it's a rational debate. Generally speaking, the other person on the other side of the table wants to feel that they were heard without going into mumbo jumbo. It's like, yeah, do I understand what you're telling me? I hear what you're saying. Do I understand it? Exploring why they're saying what they're saying and why they're saying it. And then being able to connect, say, okay, I get that. Here's why I'm saying what I'm saying. It doesn't mean you're going to agree. And you have to be able to cope with the stress and the tension in the situation that there's not an agreement, but that doesn't mean you can't mutually understand and respect each other's positions.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's nothing because why would I not say anything? No. I mean, look, I... I put it like this to people. Sometimes people find out the South is a very polite part of the world. Actually, most parts of the world are quite polite and quite indirect. When you ultimately stand back far enough on the world, most parts of the world shouting and screaming is not a way forward. And so I say to people, look, you need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. So, you know, shouting and swearing, it's like that may make you feel better, but it's not productive. And so you need to find ways. Yeah, you don't have to agree with everything else, but disagree with that be disagreeable. So I think that is the art form here. It's not about hiding something. It's about communicating, to connect rather than just kind of venting.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For everyone, and then it needs to be grounded in what you believe because there's nothing more obvious when someone is making it up as they go along. And so if you're inauthentic, people spot it immediately. And so I think it's very important to be grounded in what do you believe in and what strategies, what companies, what things are you bought into, and then it's much easier to represent it. I think it would be very hard to represent something you didn't believe in, especially knowing you're going to have to say the same thing to everyone.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there's a difference between being authentic and at times being reserved or being diplomatic. I probably like that in my personal life anyway, so maybe that makes it easier. But I think, look, let me put it this way. It was probably possible 20, 30, 40 years ago for you to say one thing to the employees, another thing to the customer, another thing for the investor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Another thing to the media. But this is a radically more transparent world. And so the first thing, if you recognize that the message ultimately needs to be the same to everyone, otherwise it's going to go horribly wrong. You just start there and say, okay, so there's no point trying to spin everything everywhere. I just need to tell people what's the point of view, and it's basically the same message.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Available to make it happen exists. Of course, it can be made better with innovation. So it's a matter of collective will rather than something new that needs to be amended.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Material is much less than original. So whether that be PT, aluminium or glass, all those three formats collected and recycled have a low carbon footprint. So it's a very attractive objective. Secondly, this is not some blue sky fantasy. There are already countries in the world which have almost 100% collection, actually a number of the Scandinavian countries are already there. They are also countries in the world where over half of our PT bottles are made from reflective places. In fact, a number of countries in Europe, including some of the Scandinavian countries, all the PET bottles that we sell are made from 100% recycled PET. So you have a fully circular economy that basically drives out waste and materially lowers the carbon footprint. So this is a very doable long-term objective and the technology...”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, plastic waste, I think, has two components. And I think with all these kind of systemic issues, it's important to make sure that everyone can restate their objectives and clarify what is the outcome they want. And I think here it's, we don't want waste in the environment, whether that be land or sea. And actually, preferably with a lower carbon footprint. If we state those two objectives, what we see is that a circular economy on packaging material can achieve both those objectives. So we set ourselves a goal called the World Without Waste. So by 2030, all our packaging will be recyclable, we'll collect a bottle and can for everyone we sell, and we'll use 50% of that back in our own packaging because it often gets downcycled into other uses of recycled PT. If we can do that, we can create a circular economy in which there is no waste in the land and the sea, and the carbon footprint of recycling”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't need more hobbies at the company, but if this could be a material segment, and I think Jack Daniels will and Coke will be a leading indicator, it could be very interesting for us.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we've been experimenting in the boundaries between the non-alcoholic and the alcoholic world. As every industry develops, people look for the white spaces and look for the opportunities that are most adjacent. And there are a set of occasions which tend to mix alcohol and soft drinks. And we see an opportunity what is called the alcohol ready to drink category, so pre-mixed cocktails, hard celsus if you're in the US, spiked versions of things. And it's a very interesting space because a lot of the drinks in that space leverage our existing brands. And if they can be provided in a registered drink format, it's potentially very interesting. So we're currently rolling out Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola pre-mixed. And I think that's going to be very interesting to see how big could this segment be?”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Attack, then there's an incentive for companies to continue to provide great tasting beverages, but to slowly bring down the calorie profile, as indeed happened to some extent in salt in some countries. So I think pressurizing things with taxes, really it's about innovation and getting people to change their diets over time, which is a broad topic that needs multi-pronged action, and I think that's really a matter for the policy.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, look, there are a couple of pieces. Taxes certainly tend to affect demand. The question, I think, would be twofold from my point of view. One is, is the action likely to produce the outcome that they're looking for? If the outcome is less obesity, does a very narrow tax on one product category, is it likely to drive down obesity? And you can look around the world where they have the sugar taxes on soft drinks or beverages in general and find that essentially it hasn't made a material difference. The problem needs to be addressed in a much broader perspective. That's point number one. Where the taxes have been put in place that also provide an incentive for innovation, i.e., for example, they're tiered, the more the sugar, the more the tanks, the less the sugar, the less.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we can and should reduce obesity rates going forward. I mean, we certainly have probably happened a few decades ago gone past the point where there are more calories available in the world than human consumption. Generally speaking, for most of human history, we had a slight deficit. Now there's enough food generated. So it absolutely needs to be an overall and it is an overall governmental policy focus. And a bit like the earlier questions, like what's our role in it? Yes, we have a role. We need to make sure we're offering products that help in that sense, whether it be smaller portions of our calorie products or zero sugar products or as we innovate to reduce the calorie profile. So absolutely. It needs to be part of the future.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, obviously I joined them at a rather interesting time at the beginning of 2020. And I had thought that we had got better at innovation. But when I saw what they were able to do to bring the vaccine to the market in less than a year, given that it's normally many, many years before a vaccine get up, was truly a staggering process. The rate at which innovation can be called forth when you need to when the focus is there was firstly incredibly impressive in their case. And I think a source of inspiration to me as I think about our own business.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel that the board can absolutely execute his role if it so chose to do so. There are a set of critical decisions by the board, capital allocation, CO succession. Being on both ends of the stick, so to speak, between the two boards, I don't feel it's a problem.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different environment, and certainly I would invite people to look at the results of good too. So I think the governance is there as it should be, and the performance is also there, which is good.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm overseen, of course, by the board and the lead independent director and the investors. There are no shortage of investors looking over my shoulder as well. And so we feel that for the Coca-Cola company, combining the two roles is the right answer because we have a robust lead independent director and we have a robust board environment in a business that is very large and very complicated and therefore we find that this moment in time, this is what best suits the co-company. It is ultimately a very large enterprise there's no real, I mean there's a tremendous amount of transparency and visibility to what's going on in Coke at a lot of observers. So it's not like there's an absence of oversight either by the lady independent or the board or the investors or all the other people who analyze the Coke Company. So I think perhaps that provides a”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does it need to be that complicated? Maybe not, but there's a lot of appetite from investors to understand the compensation. And I think rightly so, to have disclosures arguably got too long for the average investor? Probably. But I think this idea that the investor should understand what are the incentive systems in place in the company, what are they driving? At the end of the day, incentive systems do work. They're not the only factor that people pay attention to, of course. There are other guardrails, other incentives, other ways that people derive success in companies, promotions, other things.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is it optimizing for, and what are the parameters around it? What are the safeguard rules around it? What corridor can it operate in? I think a critical question that can be asked.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think there are a lot of general kind of technology related potential disasters, potential problems, whether it be bad actors or more dystopian kind of outcomes. So clearly there are ways this can go wrong in a general sense. And there are ways that can go wrong in a specific sense related to us. Some of these models don't necessarily optimize for truth. They optimize for engagement and they optimize for credibility. Credibility is not the same as truth. And so I think it's very important as we go on this AI journey, you're never going to understand the math behind it. My brain's not big enough for that. But you can understand that it's an optimization model and therefore questioning what are the objectives that it is being set? What is this?”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give money to a charity that gets matched by company funds. How do I maintain a juice line? How do I do X? And all of that is going to be at people's fingertips. So it's going to make people more productive because it's going to make the knowledge more instantaneously available.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See how AI can revolutionize content creation. The reality is it already is in the movies we watch through the CGI, but that's kind of large set piece movies. This is coming down to a very simple terrestrial level. Every image you see outside on outdoor and not that far in the future on advertising is going to be, can be generated by the machine. And that's going to be profoundly change everything. We're also just rolling out internally within our own kind of cloud, basically taking all our internal documents and putting them into the machine. So instead of hopelessly trying to find something in the company, which of course you never end up finding, you can just ask the machine, tell me how to do X. And that X could be, how do I get...”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first way, I mean, apart from some of the kind of already existing models that kind of optimize for certain things within the supply chain and other ways it's used, I think this next generation of AI examples, the first thing we did, we married the text AI with the visual AI and allowed people to make essentially outdoor ads about Coca-Cola through the AI machine. So they were able to go in, pick Coca images, and then tell through the chat AI, what did you want the image to do? I think the winner was, there's a coke with a cat in space. There's zillions of images, so it was a competition, hundreds of thousands of entries, and we put up a whole selection of the best ones in New York Times Square and in Piccadilly Circus on London. And really it was empowering consumers to play with the assets and the AI technology. So you can clear.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure I would count myself as the bread or the ham, or maybe he's in the ham sandwich. But I think Warren loves it for a whole set of very obvious reasons. Like I said, it's a stable industry. We're the market leader. We gain shares steadily each year. And we have a long track record of continuing to grow. We had 61 years in a row of growing our dividend. And that makes us an all-weather play.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, in some ways, the beverage industry is very stable. It grows at a steady rate and it's got a long way ahead of it.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, two ways of looking at consumption strands. One is to say they're incredibly stable. One of the arguments I make with the investment community is to look at the beverage industry and think about firstly how stable it is. If you do a histogram of the growth rate of the beverage industry, the median growth rate is, let's say, 4%, maybe not in the last couple of years, but let's say historically last 30 years, 4%. And the chances are it didn't grow 4%, it was three or five. I mean, this is not fluctuating in wild numbers. It's a very steady industry. And that's driven by the fact it's really a small ticket item. Beverages are cents or a few dollars. And it's a population driven business. And the industry is largely as yet uncreated in the developing and emerging markets. So there's a long way to go. So firstly,”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of historic reasons is the short answer. There were some countries where they got to before us and they have had some historic share positions. There are some countries where we fell asleep at the wheel. I think the one that's big in Norway is actually the zero sugar version of it. Spent too long trying to hang on to TAB in Norway. And so that's generally one of the two buckets that characterizes where we have yet to become marketably in every single market. There are a few left that we are not a market leader in. But overall, our leadership position keeps extending each year.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rural areas. And part of the thing that the reason they got to COLT was they thought, well, if Coke can get everywhere, we can get everywhere. But then they couldn't. And they were trying to think, well, why did Coke get there and we don't get there? Because it's often lifesaving. And the answer is everyone along the chain wants the Coke to get there because they make a bit of money. So economics matter.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, the product reaches almost every corner of the world. And I think there are two aspects which are very interesting. One by chance, not necessarily by design, it is a product that survives a decent amount of time in tip-top condition. You don't get degradation of the product over time. So it stays good drinking order for a very long time. Secondly, obviously we have created demand. And because we've had the philosophy of everyone should make money along the chain, it gets to the far reaches of the world because there's an economics incentive for it to do so. Actually, there's a good podcast by Melinda Gates talking about actually how ultimately we ended up helping the Gates Foundation move some AIDS medicine around Africa,”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes True. Why? When you think of Coke, it's happiness, it's optimism, it's enjoyment. I mean, it's a set of things that are very true about the Christmas period. And so over the years, we have used the vehicle of Santa Claus or the polar bears famously one of the modern characterizations of Santa Claus. was actually known as the Sombloom Santa, who by the way he was Swedish. So I'm very near to you. And there were actually many Santa Clauses 100 years ago. And the Sam Baloon Santa was one characterization that caught on. And it just fits very naturally with the brand and the time of year and people coming together and sharing meals and occasions.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People want to connect with people they know sometimes. We generally spend most of our connectivity on the overall sport or music in general rather than personalities. Personalities can come and go, but the World Cup is always the World Cup. We've been doing the Olympics for almost 100 years, very long-term sponsors of FIFA World Cup, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's much easier to build up long-term platform around the property or the event rather than a person who's going to come and go.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about everything you experience a beverage product with five senses. It's not just about the taste. The package it comes with, you can get people to debate. Heatedly, whether a beverage, a coke is best drank from a can or a glass bottle or people. I mean, people have strong opinions on the matter, and that's without talking about the liquid. That's just the thing they're holding in their hand because touch matters. Smell matters. Sight matters. Everything matters when you drink the drink. So these tests, you can test one sense if you want. But in the end, it's the package of fences and the ideas that in people's heads that make the brand of the beverage. You cannot fully disaggregate them. Generally speaking, people prefer things that taste good, but you cannot disaggregate the whole mental imagery of what goes together.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Firstly, a massive, massive, massive amount of consistency. We have never, ever, ever changed the logo. Not the number of design agencies haven't tried to entice do so. Not that it was standardized in 1886. It took us until about 1923 before we standardized the logo. But once we standardize it, we never ever changed it. Because people learn to recognize things, not just the words and the sounds, but the visual image. So we have protected jealousy, all that iconography around Co and never, ever changed like the font. And the fact that Coke is red all the time. And I think that, you know, after so many years of marketing and success. Is part of why it's so widely recognized.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yes, it's a global icon, it's obviously heavily linked to being an American icon. But in many countries, most countries in the world, they see it as a profoundly local brand. So again, generations and managers have made not just maintain a unique coherent global unity, but have also managed to make it profoundly local.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the pieces, one of the elements of the secret source, particularly a brand Coca-Cola, has been this in two dimensions. One has been an enduring ability to be both a touchstone to something you know that has been there for a long time. I mean, the formula, the same, the Spensarian script of the font is the same. Like there's all these touchstone elements of comfort of the past. Yet each generation of managers have made its marketing and the way it's brought to the marketplace relevant for that moment in time. So it is both representative of continuity into the path and comfort, yet also relevant and exciting about the future, which is a very hard balancing act to do. The other hard balancing act which has been achieved is to be both a global brand and local in each of the countries that sold in.”
2023-05-24 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · James Quincey Chair and CEO of Coca-Cola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source