This is my friend, Brad Abare. Brad is the founder of the non-profit Center for Church Communication, home to the popular Church Marketing Sucks, as well as the founder of the Personality Profile, a tool used by organizations to navigate change, communication, marketing and outreach.
Throughout this year, I want to introduce you to some of my friends. People whose voices I know, respect, and appreciate. Their words often challenge me in my thinking and faith. I hope they’ll challenge you, too. Enjoy!
In a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek*, Duane Stanford tells the story of the Coca-Cola Company, and the intense focus they have to penetrate Africa with the gospel of Coke. “Like Alexander the Great, at the prospect of having no worlds left to conquer…Coca-Cola will rely on some of the poorest nations to generate the 7 to 9 percent earnings growth it has promised investors.”
Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola, says “There’s nowhere in Africa that we don’t go. Being in a country is very easy, you can go and set up a depot in every capital city. That’s not what we’re about. We go to every town, every village, every community, every township.”
Coke’s mission is clear, and they won’t let geography stop them. In much of Africa, it’s a challenge to deliver product over poor roads, through large crowds and in the grueling heat. Their first rule is to get the product “cold and close.” There is 65 percent unemployment inside one township of 500,000 in Johannesburg, South Africa. No problem for Coke. In 2009, they stocked the streets with drink coolers and Coke signage. “To keep the coolers full, the [local] bottler extended credit to merchants who didn’t have the capital to take on inventory, giving them seven days to pay.”
Coke is so focused on reaching Africa, they go to great lengths to help communities beyond just generating and satisfying their thirst.
Ann Kimeu, 34, sips Sprite through a straw from a green glass bottle. A few blocks away, residents of the slum, which has no public water or sewer system, pay 3 shillings to fill used 20-liter cooking oil jugs with fresh water from a Coke-sponsored well. At a new bathroom Coke is helping to build in the poorest section of the slum, it will cost 2 shillings to use the toilet or the shower. Kimeu buys soft drinks as many as four times a week. It’s not a treat. She’s mostly just thirsty. A seamstress, Kimeu earns about 1,000 Kenya shillings ($12) a week when business is good. At 35 shillings a bottle, the soft drinks consume 14 percent or more of her income.
If Coke will go to such great lengths to reach a continent with sugar water, what will it take for us to reach across the street and around the block with the transforming story of the Gospel? May I suggest that it will not be through fancy signage, gorgeous buildings, attractive graphics or mesmerizing experiences. It won’t be through Facebook, Twitter or the next big social platform. All of these things might help, but the one thing, more than any other, that will secure the attention and affection of the outsider is the generous hospitality of a spirit-led life.
Coke understands that the closer it gets to homes, the closer it gets to hearts. It would be difficult not to welcome Coke into your life when it’s right outside your door!
Two thousand years ago God cared so much for this world he created, that he sent his son to dwell among us. To show us back to God. To show us the way home.
I pray we will have an increasing love for the outsider, and a relentless determination to go to them, be with them, and show them the way home.
*Check out the original article, here.
This is adapted from Brad’s forward in the new book, Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication. Check it out, here. Follow Brad on Twitter: @BradAbare.
