When Coca-Cola CEO Henrique Braun introduced his firm’s first-quarter outcomes late final month, no one in advertising appeared to note.
Net income grew 12% to $12.5 billion. Organic income rose 10%. Global unit case quantity grew 3%, led by the United States, China and India. Earnings per share grew 18%. Operating margin expanded from 32.9% to 35.0%. Free money movement got here in at $1.8 billion.
The firm raised its full-year steering. The dividend, raised once more, is now in its sixty fourth consecutive 12 months of annual will increase.
Braun, 4 months into the job after stepping up from chief working officer when James Quincey moved to chairman, delivered the news in a placid, 30-minute by-the-numbers earnings name: “We’ve had a strong start to the year.”
It was probably the most boring quarter you’ll examine all 12 months. It was additionally one of the best quarter most shopper manufacturers may dream of.
And it tells you all the pieces about what’s damaged inside advertising’s urge for food for what it chooses to disregard.
Coca-Cola shouldn’t be promoting into a simple market. Soda volumes have declined within the United States for 20 years. GLP-1s are reshaping urge for food and beverage consumption. Health regulators have layered sugar taxes onto the class. Trade tariffs have impacted prices throughout aluminium, freight, and focus. The shelf is extra aggressive than at any level in dwelling reminiscence. And Coca-Cola has not, by any standard definition, launched a serious new product in years.
Coke. Diet Coke. Coke Zero Sugar. Sprite. Fanta. Minute Maid. Powerade. Smartwater. The technique is to promote the identical drinks to the identical folks in barely extra related methods.
And it’s working. Volume up. Price up. Margin up. Cash up.
There is not any transformation program.
Braun, like James Quincey earlier than him, like Muhtar Kent earlier than him, like Neville Isdell earlier than him, has chosen to refine the present advertising mannequin he inherited quite than reinvent it. The 70/20/10 funds allocation remains to be in place.
The all-brand-architecture-under-the-Coca-Cola-masterbrand self-discipline remains to be in place. The local-execution-with-global-platforms philosophy remains to be in place. The funding behind “Real Magic,” the platform that launched in 2021, remains to be in place 5 years later. Coca-Cola doesn’t zag or zig. It compounds.
Now think about the noise. Around the identical time Coca-Cola reported 1 / 4 most chief advertising officers would commerce their kidneys for, the advertising press, together with this one, ran multiples tales on the canned water model Liquid Death.