Coca-Cola Thailand's GM Jorge Garduno explains how a sugary, carbonated drink may help keep the youth of today healthy
For Jorge Garduno, the general manager of Coca-Cola Thailand, football and Coke are intertwined as the latter aims to promote a healthy lifestyle among the youth.
The latest Coca-Cola-sponsored event was last month's stopover in Bangkok of the much-coveted Fifa World Cup Trophy Tour, which covers 83 countries worldwide.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, a long-time football fan, personally welcomed the World Cup Trophy upon its arrival at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport.
About 10,000 Thais went to see the trophy while it was put on display in Bangkok.
"We've been an official sponsor of the Fifa World Cup since 1978. In September 2009, we launched the global trophy tour in a lead-up to the 2010 World Cup competition, which will be held in South Africa in June.
"We also launched a warm-up TV commercial in Thai and other markets promoting football activities [in connection with the June competition].
"Overall, we're doing this at three different levels - the global, national and local levels. [Besides the Fifa World Cup], we will also sponsor football events at the national level via the Thai Premier League this year.
"That could be a step towards the regional level. Then, we also have been promoting
football at the grassroots level via the 25-year-old Coke Cup, which recruits and nurtures talented amateur Thai players, aged 12 to 17," says Mexican national Garduno.
Coca-Cola's main target groups are now aged between 12 and 40, with sales of the carbonated "sparkling" beverages currently accounting for 70 per cent of the company's total sales. The so-called "still" beverages such as tea, juice and bottled water generate the rest of the sales revenue.
Despite last year's economic contraction of 2 to 3 per cent, Garduno said 2009 sales of Coca-Cola in Thailand still enjoyed a modest growth, with preliminary figures for the first three quarters of 2009 showing a single-digit growth.
Sales of Coca-Cola and related brands in the Thai market amounted to more than Bt20 billion in 2008.
"In fact, we have a very diverse portfolio of products. Despite the increasing popularity of home-made beverages, we believe packaged beverages still have a lot of room to grow because consumers want convenience and they have different needs during different times of the day.
"[In other words], they look for options and diversity as we generally need about two litres of liquid every day. We have also developed our products to be healthy, so we have Coke Zero that has no sugar content and we have drinking water," he said.
Some health experts have blamed sugary soft drinks as being a significant cause of obesity, especially in the US and rapidly-growing Asian economies.
In response, the 40-year-old Garduno said obesity should be seen as a consequence of one's unbalanced lifestyle in terms of physical activity and diet.
"About 20 years ago, we took about 30,000 steps on average every day, but today we may do just about 10,000 steps. That's one example of not enough physical activity.
"I myself try to go for a 30-minute jog every day and I still enjoy two to three bottles of regular Coke, another two to three bottles of water and one juice on average per day [so the physical activities and diet are somewhat balanced]," he explained.
