Coca-Cola Co. chairman and CEO Neville Isdell is buying up troubled bottlers, pushing them to reform their operations and packing boards of the largest operations with handpicked executives. Once
these ailing bottlers have been fixed, Isdell intends to sell them to companies that pledge to work closely with Coke.
Coke relies on its vast bottling network to put its Coca-Cola,
Sprite, Fanta and hundreds of other brands into the hands of people in more than 200 countries. Under agreements dating as far back as 1899, bottlers are also the company's grassroots marketing force,
with teams of salespeople--what the company calls its "feet on the street"--who put displays in restaurants and stores, and even arrange bottles on vendors' shelves.
Isdell has
reorganized Coke's top management, naming four others with bottling credentials--they "have dirt under their fingernails," he says--to the 15-member executive leadership team at Coke's Atlanta
headquarters. He also designated an international bottling executive, Muhtar Kent, as president and COO; Kent is the presumed heir apparent.
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