Coca-Cola Life: can brands ever play a role in tackling obesity?

The Guardian
Brands promotion of healthier products is often dismissed, but we need lower-sugar products to prevent a health crisis
Obesity is one of the most alarming health issues of our time. Sadly, there is an embedded perception among many people that obesity is, in essence, an utterly avoidable disease that has no historical precedence.
In our society, there is an organic-eating, Nike Fuelband-toting demographic that doesn’t take obesity seriously enough. Ask any of them to rank obesity alongside cancer, HIV, Ebola – to name a fraction of the global threats to human life – and, nine times out of 10, obesity will come in last. And yet – and this is the crux of the matter – if no action is taken, obesity is predicted to affect 55% of boys and 70% girls in the UK by 2050 (pdf). In other parts of the world, the situation is already grim; Mexico, for instance, has reported that three-quarters of the population are clinically obese.
These facts have been exhaustively documented but nonetheless they don’t seem to have done much to alter our outlook on obesity. It should, therefore, come as some (small) relief to learn that there are a number of brands finally taking a stand on obesity.
The UK launch of Coca-Cola Life in August seems to be one such indicator that some organisations want to improve their health credentials and, by extension, the health of their customers. Coca-Cola Life, supported by a huge marketing campaign, has about a third fewer calories than regular Coke and is part of the company’s drive to expand its range of low-calorie products.
Other brands, such as Heinz, Bisto, and even the much-scrutinised McDonald’s have also developed products that have reduced salt or sugar content. Surely, this is a sign that brands everywhere are finally waking up to their responsibility in solving the obesity epidemic?
The reality, unfortunately, is much more complicated than that. Initiatives by brands have been met with widespread suspicion, particularly among millennials (people aged 18-34), who have condemned these projects as no more than fluffy marketing exercises, designed by some of the principal perpetrators of the obesity crisis.
It’s easy to see their point; in particular, the colour of the new Coca-Cola Life bottle seems to be misleading, suggesting that we will all be fooled into believing it is good for people and planet simply by virtue of the fact that it is green.
Moreover, in the UK – where these products have all been introduced – the government has been debating whether to introduce a sugar tax. There is increasing pressure for the government to take decisive action on obesity owing to the vast burden it places each year on the NHS. A sugar tax would dramatically reduce the profits of the aforementioned companies. In this context, can brands really be trusted to give customers positive choices if left to their own devices? The answer, at first consideration, would be an emphatic no.
To millennials, regardless of what grand statements their latest advertising campaign propagates, brands are hell-bent on pushing their products – and their profits – at any cost. Nothing could have expressed this more strongly than an episode on Russell Brand’s YouTube channel, The Trews, in which the comedian expresses how “we need to understand how adverts are tricking us into buying stuff”.
The trouble is, Brand’s viewpoint is representative of a glaring problem that all brands now face: it means that every time a multinational brand tries to raise its head above the parapet and do something good, our natural instinct is to shoot them down in a fireball of cynicism. This kind of reaction is damaging.
Let me explain: that organisations like McDonald’s, Heinz, Bisto and Coca-Cola have a long way to go until they can be classified as truly socially conscious, is not in question. That the threat of government regulation has, so far, played a major role in forcing companies to substantially reduce sugar levels in their products is also a moot point. However, the fact remains that we need the participation of such brands if we want to avert the obesity crisis.
Intelligent brands are already responding to customers who want to purchase products that are driven by purpose and that correspond to their values, and we should hope that others follow suit. Google has gone one step further by installing incentivising vending machines in its offices, where employees pay one cent per gram of sugar, two cents per gram of fat, four cents per gram of saturated fat and one dollar per gram of trans fat.
Ultimately, we need to give brands a chance; we need to help ourselves and – sometimes – that means supporting and promoting brands’ initiatives, one step at a time.
Matthew Phillips is the co-founder of Beautiful Corporations