Cola Deals Go Flat

Cola Deals Go Flat

Editor's Note: Four years ago the lead story in the August "Connection" was Pepsi and Coke corporations' forays into "exclusive" marketing deals with school districts. Here is an update.

Four years ago, Coke and Pepsi began offering financial payments to school districts in exchange for exclusive advertising and beverage sale rights.

These deals foster brand loyalty amongst schoolchildren, who can only drink one brand of soda and see that brand's advertising every school day.

Many school districts had decided that the money was more valuable than keeping advertising out of the schools.

But now the tide is turning. "School districts have begun to weigh the cash against the effects of selling out their students and they're realizing that it's just not worth it," said Dylan Bernstein, Senior Program Director of the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education.

"People are waking up to the fact that soda deals won't solve a district's financial problems, they (the corporations) only seek to take advantage of them."

Big Rejections in PA and MI

Within the first half of 2000, the two largest-ever proposed deals were denied: Philadelphia's 10-year, $43 million Coke contract and a Southwestern Michigan consortium contract which would have involved 110 school districts.

Together these two deals would have captured nearly 500,000 students and saturated them with advertising for soda pop.

Those half million students now will enjoy a less commercial education due to the work of involved citizens.

Parents Jill Saull and Pat Albright proved powerful enough to ward off Coca-Cola by raising public awareness and communicating with the Board of Education.

In Southwest Michigan, community members expressed their concerns at a Kalamazoo School Board meeting.

"Our schools will be turned into peddlers of sugar water," warned a retired teacher. However, the Board didn't heed his advice. Kalamazoo joined the consortium, believing that a less commercial deal could be negotiated.

Luckily, the greed of the soda companies made it clear that a deal was not in the schools' best interests.

"The bids encouraged increased sales volume and marketing efforts directed at students," the consortium noted in its public statement of rejection. Because the soda companies wouldn't drop the ads, the consortium dropped the deal.

Madison Escapes

The first school district to sign an exclusive deal has become the first to free itself of one. When Madison (WI) signed in 1997, the district didn't realize the enormous amount of advertising mandated by the contract.

"Coke was smarter than we were," admitted one School Board member. Three members who originally approved the deal voted to let it expire this fall.

Though Coke continued to woo the Board, including taking out a full-page newspaper ad, citizens vocally opposed the contract's renewal.

"The people of Madison have said, "Enough!" We are sick of corporations lobbying to cut funding for education and then trying to take advantage of our schools with their poorly disguised bribes," said Matt D. Nelson, a local organizer who had warned the Board not to sign in 1997.