Coca-Cola marketing reshuffle aimed at driving new growth will see 4,000 job losses - some voluntary

Marketing Week reports that Coca-Cola plans to create a "Platform Services" organization to control how it scales marketing worldwide, aimed at making data-management and consumer analytics more efficient. Chief Information and Integrated Services Officer, Barry Simpson, will head up the organization.

Coca-Cola says, "Platform Services is designed to improve and scale functional expertise and provide consistent service, including for governance and transactional work. This will eliminate duplication of efforts across the company and is built to work in partnership with bottlers."



Coca-Cola has suffered Coronavirus-related losses due to venues like cinemas and restaurants closing during the pandemic. The company reported revenue was down 28% year-on-year in the most recent quarter and the change in tack looks designed to address changing trading conditions. Coca-Cola owns about 400 brands, and there's going to be a cull based on what's most scalable where. That means creating five global brand categories for marketing efforts, with the target of driving growth more efficiently. It's yet to be revealed exactly who will head up each new role within the structure.

Per Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey,

Genuine Scalability Solution, or Just Sweetening the Idea of Job Cuts?

Coca-Cola currently runs 17 business units across four geographical areas. The company will now operate just nine units, and it claims that's based on an effort to improve how quickly brands can be scaled. That's primarily where the 4,000 job losses will come from, and Quincey adds "As we implement these changes, we're continuing to evolve our organization, which will include significant changes in the structure of our workforce."

Sounds like code for "more job losses on the way" to me. It also seems that this is just a classic round of cuts because of the virus. I know there's a need to spin announcements like this to a degree, but I sometimes wonder why companies don't just come out and say what they really mean more often. Naive of me possibly?