By Jim Hightower
 |
| Coke wants to get rid of tap water |
Stealth? Why would a corporation
known for its iconic ads like Coke spend big bucks on advertising that it
doesn’t want consumers to notice? Shhhh.
The soft drink giant’s campaign is a
surreptitious ploy to enlist restaurants in a marketing conspiracy that targets
you, your children, and — of course — your wallet.
Coke calls its covert gambit “Cap the Tap.”
It’s urging restaurateurs to stop offering plain old tap water to customers:
“Every time your business fills a cup or glass with tap water, it pours
potential profits down the drain.”
Cap the Tap can put a stop to that, says Coke, “by teaching [your] crew members or wait staff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages.”
The program provides a guide for
restaurant managers who would direct Coke’s customer assault, a backroom poster
to remind wait staff “when and how to suggestively sell beverages,” and a
participant’s guide to put “suggestive selling” foremost in mind as staff
confronts the enemy… uh, I mean customers.
Tactics include outflanking those
recalcitrant customers who insist on water. Just switch the sales pitch to
bottled water — remember, Coca-Cola also owns Dasani, one of the top-selling
brands of bottled water in the US.
Early in its Cap the Tap scheme, the
beverage behemoth offered two incentive programs for wait staff: “Suggest More
and Score” and “Get Your Fill.” Both were competitions to spur servers to push
more Coke on American restaurant-goers.
Meanwhile, Coke’s CEO has declared
that “obesity is today’s most challenging health issue,” and solving it
requires all of us “doing our part.” Really? By selling more Coke? That’s proof
that hypocrisy is now the official rocket fuel of corporate profits.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the
populist newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. OtherWords.org
