The employees of the shuttered Coca-Cola bottling plant in Thessaloniki who have called for a boycott of the company’s products have released a statement accusing the company of hypocrisy and false advertising over an advert which portrays Coca-Cola’s presence in Greece as stable and which depicts the Thessaloniki plant as fully operational.
The advert titled ‘Coca-Cola Tria Epsilon: Here together’ is clearly intended to bolster the image of Coca-Cola having a stable presence in the country:
In it the voice-over is heard saying, “Coca-Cola Tria Epsilon is here and will stay here, in our Greece, for a better future which we create here, together.” Towards the end of the advert images of smiling employees are seen working in a plant, intercut with scenes from characteristic areas of Thessaloniki.
According to the striking employees of the company, that is highly misleading given that the Thessaloniki plant has been shut since 2012. As previously reported by TPPI, the employees claim that the company is moving its bottling plants out of Greece in search of cheaper labour in countries such as Bulgaria, a claim that Coca-Cola Tria Epsilon vehemently denies.
The employees accuse Coca-Cola of gross hypocrisy, with the company claiming that it is socially responsible on the one hand, while at the same time turning its back on the country in which Coca-Cola Hellenic, the parent company of Coca-Cola Tria Epsilon, grew to become a vast multinational with net sales revenue of nearly seven billion euros in 2013 catering to nearly 600 million people in 28 countries.
The employees claim that Coca-Cola Tria Epsilon desperately wants to avoid the boycott call over its products from gaining steam and is using a savvy marketing campaign to bolster its image as a company with a stable presence in the country.
Below is the full statement released by the workers, (translation by TPPI):
“The multinational Coca-Cola, well known for its abilities in the world of marketing and advertising has provided a masterclass in misdirection and hypocrisy towards Greek consumers and the Greek people.
With a sneaky television ad set around public spaces and monuments of Thessaloniki, it is attempting to ‘convince’ consumers that it continues as normal its activities in Greece, attempting in this fashion to overshadow our struggle for the Thessaloniki plant to operate again.
Coca-Cola is advertising that it is staying in Greece at the same time that it has shut plants in Corfu, Rhodes, Athens, Mesolongi, Patras and now in Thessaloniki.
Coca-Cola depicts in its adverts ‘happy worker-actors’ at the same time that the factory has shut and employees continue their strike with the weapon of a boycott seeking its reoperation and their return to work.
Coca-Cola for months made the impossible possible in its attempt that its shuttering of the Thessaloniki plant not become know. With costly adverts that were profitable for the big media companies it assured their silence regarding our nine month struggle.
NOW following the wide participation of the Greek people in the boycott, Coca-Cola is misleading consumers with clearly propagandistic adverts which depict the Thessaloniki plant in full operation.
We remind all Greeks that the plant continues to be shut and our struggle continues.
For this reason we call on the consumer base to continue to boycott the products of the multinational Coca Cola until the plant reopens.
Our struggle is bringing results.
NOT A SIP OF AMITA, FANTA. COCA-COLA, AVRA.”