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11/06/07
Remarks to the Asia Society Upon Accepting the 2007 Global
Leadership Award
New York, New York
E. Neville Isdell, Chairman and CEO, The Coca-Cola
Company
INTRODUCTION OF NEVILLE ISDELL BY BARRY DILLER, GALA
CHAIRMAN, AND CHAIRMAN AND CEO, IAC
Mr. DILLER: Thank you, Richard Holbrooke. I'm happy to be
here. This is better than what I've been through during the
day. So believe me, Asia Society every night for me.
Just before Thanksgiving in 2003, just 4 years ago, our
honoree was sitting in his library, overlooking the blue water
that was kissing the beach. His biggest decision that day was
golf or lunch at the club? He was relaxed. He was happy. He
was fulfilled. He had earned the right to be there.
Earlier in 2001, he had stepped down as the CEO of one of
the largest Coca-Cola bottling companies in the world. Just
another stop in the remarkable journey of our honoree.
Irish-born -- look at him, is there any doubt of his roots?
At 10 years old, his family moved to Zambia. Educated there,
and a social activist as a college student, then the Coca-Cola
system was waiting for him, but he simply couldn't hold a job.
After three positions at the bottling company, he was sent to
The Coca-Cola Company Australia as the General Manager, and
he was promoted out of there in 6 months, because he was needed
to run the huge and broken bottling business in the Philippines.
This Irishman figures a moving target is hard to hit.
So, he and his wife and partner, Pamela, packed their bags
they had just unpacked and headed for Manila. The Philippines
Bottling Company, with 12,000 employees, was losing money, and
it was losing share.
In 2 years, under our honoree's leadership, the business
grew more than dramatically, and became highly profitable. And
that other company -- I forget the name, but it begins with
a "P" -- was losing money, and share.
That done, his boss Don Keough said, "You've been there
long enough. You're off to Germany. Our business there is sick."
And Neville said, "Don, I don't speak German." Don
replied, "Not my problem, yours."
I don't know what language our honoree spoke, but the
German problem was solved. What followed was a long list
of global assignments, each with more responsibility and too
numerous to mention.
But now, let's go back to that day four years ago. The hectic
life of a global executive was behind him. He and Pamela could
share their time between a wonderful home in Provence and his
paradise in Barbados. It sounds idyllic, doesn't it?
But after Thanksgiving, the phone rang. And that phone call
put a lock on the door of those lovely homes -- at least temporarily
-- because he was asked to take on another little job, and that
was to become the Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company,
which had -- until the mid-1990s, known nothing but success.
But from the mid-1990s on, until that phone call, the global
music of, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke," was
muted, and the lyrics could have read, "I wish the world
would buy more Coke." Not the catchiest of tunes.
Well, our honoree took the assignment, and three and a half
years later, the music is bright. The rhythm is back. The men
and women of the company, worldwide, are wearing the shoes of
champions. Our capitalization of the Company has increased by
approximately $30 billion, rather amazing.
Asia represents an important part of The Coca-Cola Company's
past. And under our remarkable honoree's leadership, an exciting
part of Coca-Cola's future -- from Sapporo, Japan to Hogarth,
South of Australia, it has never been brighter.
Just to give you a little peek -- in China this year, well
over 1 billion cases of The Coca-Cola Company's products will
be sold, and it's just beginning.
How did this son of Ireland do it? Well, first, he calmed
the place down. Secondly, he surrounded himself with a new management
team, and then he drilled into the team a manifesto for profitable
growth. He became a listener, a student, an activist, and a
spokesperson. He called on, not only his Company, but global
business leadership to confront and deal with the health, wellness
and environmental problems confronting society and the world.
As a Director of The Coca-Cola Company, I've had a chance
to observe our honoree, through these years of leadership. And
I compliment the Society, as having chosen as its honoree this
year, this global citizen and leader. In adding his name to
the roster of distinguished honorees, you add luster and brightness.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in saluting E. Neville
Isdell. [Applause]
REMARKS OF MR. ISDELL
Thank you, Barry, and to answer the one question, Vielen
Dank Herr Diller. Vieleicht ist es besser wir sprechen nur Deutsch
heute Abend, yah?
[Translation: Many thanks, Mr. Diller. Probably it is better
that we only speak German tonight.]
[Laughter]
Dick Holbrooke, your Excellencies, members of the diplomatic
corps, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I really
am honored to share this evening, not only with the Secretary-General,
but with the other distinguished awardees, but also with the
people of The Coca-Cola System, the 800,000 people who, every
day, go out to do the work of The Coca-Cola Company and around
100,000 of those are in Asia.
I also would like to just go back to sitting at the table last
year, at the 50th Annual dinner with [Assistant Secretary of
State] Chris Hill, and the discussion that we had at the time.
It sounded as if he had an insurmountable problem, but with
the determination that he displayed in a very private conversation
about how he believed something really could be done with diplomacy
with regard to North Korea and denuclearization and the Six-Party
Talks, which the Secretary-General was so much a part of setting
up in his own role as Foreign Minister of Korea.
And, I do want to -- as we think about this world of ours --
say "Thank you, Chris," for what you have done to
demonstrate that diplomacy really can work, and does work, in
this world. [Applause]
Understanding Culture
Accepting this award from the Asia Society means a great deal
to me, and I want to tell you why.
Personally, I've had the very good fortune to have lived in
some 11 countries on 5 continents. And I find that, if you want
to understand business anywhere and be successful, it isn't
just about the language. You absolutely must understand the
culture.
And, in fact, if you take that further, I believe that for
a peaceful world, if we don't understand other cultures, we'll
talk past each other. It's an imperative. It's an imperative
that, I'm afraid, we all fall short of.
But, for these past 51 years, the Asia Society has truly done
more to improve the cultural understanding between the societies
-- not only in Asia -- but with the United States in particular,
and I laud them for what they've done, and what they'll do in
the future. Because this is the core of being successful.
It's why we at The Coca-Cola Company are very proud to support
the Asia Society's Family Program, which gives American children
a window into the rich and very diverse cultures of Asia. So,
I want to thank and commend Dick and Vishakha and all of the
team on their fine leadership.
A Cultural Lesson from the Philippines
I also just want to give you a micro-feel for what I mean about
culture. Barry talked about me going to the Philippines.
Well, one of the things I did before I went there is I read
up about the Philippines. I read up about Philippine culture,
and amongst a number of those trays, I learned about -- there
may be some Filipinos in the room -- I learned about pakikisama
and utang na loob, and how that underpinned how the
Philippines worked.
And recently -- this is not all a good story by the way --
recently I was back in Manila in March of this year. We had
just bought our way back into the bottler there. We had brought
in some very experienced people from three different continents.
And there with the Philippine team, I challenged them. I said,
"Tell me -- how many of you understand what is pakikisama,
and how many of you understand what is utang na loob?"
To my surprise, and also my shame, none of them did. They'd
been through a cultural assimilation, but they had not been
through the right type of cultural assimilation. By the way,
pakikisama literally means, "getting along."
Utang na loob is the whole sense of obligation that is
created within that society.
And that's at the core of what we have to do as a business
if I look just through the lens that I have to look through.
If we're going to be successful, not only do we have to understand
culture, but we have to be able to help build sustainable communities
around the world. Because frankly, if you're going to have a
sustainable business, you have to have sustainable communities
in order to be able to serve them successfully.
And I do want to, within that cultural piece, recognize that
tonight our competitor, Pepsi-Cola are here. They've taken a
table. And I want to thank them for doing that. Because -- no,
I'm very sincere about this -- because we fight in the marketplace
every day, but what we try to do together is to build better
and more successful societies. And if we lose sight of that
in the competitive fight, then I think we're failing everyone.
Asia and The Coca-Cola Company
Now, Barry said it -- Asia is a very important part of our history.
It's a very important, in fact, the most important part of our
future. Not only do we have a flourishing and thriving business
in Japan, which is so important to our overall success, but
of course, our two fastest-growing countries are India and China.
We know that our future is just so attached -- not just to India
and China -- but to all of Asia, to the Vietnams, the Indonesias,
the Philippines, where I spent 4 wonderful years, and all of
those other great cultures and societies.
And, we're investing. We've invested a billion dollars this
year. We have an R&D center in China, and of course, the
sponsorship of the Olympics in Beijing.
But, we know that for our growth to be sustainable, Asia's
growth needs to be sustainable as well. And to do that, we need
to come back to communities. We need to come back to addressing
the needs of those communities.
Building Sustainable Communities
So, let me give you some examples of what we do. We look at
the environment, and we're looking at a goal of trying to recycle
some 100 percent of our PET plastic bottles. But, more importantly,
we're investing in the ability to recycle those bottles into
new bottles.
On the terrible challenge of HIV/AIDS, which Dick Holbrooke
does such a wonderful job on, we're proud to share some of that
work with him. In a broad context, we undertake education, and
we also provide our own people, where needed, anti-retrovirals.
Water
That brings me to the number one issue which the Secretary-General
was very kind to have mentioned, and that is, the issue that's
number one in our agenda, and that's water. And it's two things:
it's the access to safe water, but it's actually the conservation
of water.
There's no one company, there's no government, there's no NGO
that's going to be able to solve the problem. It's something
we have to do together. It's why we signed the CEO Water Mandate,
and we helped fund what we call the Global Water Challenge.
We're on a journey. The journey for us is to be able to put
back every single drop we use, both in terms of the product
that we sell, and what we use to manufacture that product. We
do it through reduction, we do it through replenishment, and
we also do it through reuse.
We're part of -- in terms of provision -- 70 community water
programs in 40-something countries. We have signed an overall
agreement with the WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, to work on
the restoration and the preservation of seven key water basins
around the world. Two of those are in Asia -- the Mekong and
the Yangtze.
They're important steps, but there's so much more to do. And
I want to be honest as we stand here tonight, as we try to integrate
ourselves in every community in which we operate in a successful
way, we haven't always been successful.
The message to us -- and to all of us -- is that where we have
been successful, our business has flourished. So this is truly
enlightened self-interest -- being a local partner and building
societies together, for us from The Coca-Cola Company and just
the very small footprint that we have on this world.
So, I want to thank you tonight for this really great honor.
I'm indebted to you, and if you want to go back to the way the
Filipinos would describe it, I have utang to all of you
tonight.
Thank you very much.
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