Press Release: Sales Not the Only Thing Dragging for Coke’s Dasani

Contact: Nick Guroff, 617-784-4753                                                                    
For Immediate Release: October 21, 2009

The New York Times is reporting that sales of Coke’s Dasani bottled water are down 19 percent in North America compared to the same time period last year. Sales of multipacks fell even more.

Despite spending heavily in North America on marketing to resuscitate Dasani and other beverage lines, the bottling giant is running up against shifting public opinion about bottled water.

“Coke is ‘disappointed’ in the trend, but it has only itself to blame,” said Kelle Louaillier, Executive Director of Corporate Accountability International. “The corporation has stubbornly refused to answer to consumer concerns about Dasani – now people are just getting their water elsewhere…namely from the tap.”

A Harris Poll released last week found that close to one in three Americans switched from bottled to tap water in the last year. Thanks to public education campaigns like Corporate Accountability International’s Think Outside the Bottle, a growing number of people are now aware that Dasani comes from the same source as the tap.

And though the campaign has compelled the other two leading bottlers to label the source of their bottled water brands, Coke continues to drag its feet.

“Coke has built a market for Dasani by marketing its product as somehow better than the tap,” said Louaillier. “If this dip in sales doesn’t convince Coke that misleading marketing is bad for business, I don’t know what will.”

In the last three years, tens of thousands of people have called on Coke CEO Muhtar Kent to label the source of Dasani. Corporate Accountability International is planning to keep up the pressure on the corporation until it comes clean.