The announcement that Weber Shandwick (WS) has parted with the Coca Cola company came as a huge surprise. Theirs had been a long and productive relationship of 15 years and had seemed impenetrable.
What beggars belief is that WS lost the account because of a client conflict. WS had taken on the Milk Processors Education Program and executed a campaign called 'Think About Your Drink' which publicised the results of a study that showed that people in America consumed nearly a quarter of their total daily calories by drinking unhealthy beverages - the majority of the drinks were 'nutrition poor, sugar sweetened..soft drinks'.
The angry statement issued by Coke said: "WS conducted work on a programme for another client that was a direct, inappropriate and misguided attack on our industry".
It seems absolutely ludicrous that WS didn't realise this before they took on a relatively obscure small account like the Milk Processors Education Programme. I spent a long time thinking about this. Surely someone at WS thought 'hang on..we can't go out and run a campaign criticising one of our biggest clients products and industry?'
Or not. Perhaps it is indicative of how large organisations that operate in silos just don't communicate well internally. At Peppercom we put a huge amount of effort into integration and communication internally and it is a challenge. We are only 70 people and have 5 offices. For an organisation like WS this has to be a huge problem.
However - and this is where I have a problem with believeing that it was just an internal communications disaster - we are supposed to be communications professionals! WS even has 'internal communications' as one of its service offerings. And I just find it hard to believe that the team on the Milk account were oblivious to their largest client.
That's where it all looks a bit fishy..was the client wobbly already? Was it handled badly by WS? A relationship of 15 years to end over a mistake like that is a bit suspicious to say the least. Whatever the real truth is, I am sure that there is a story behind the story.
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