“I can be the chief agitator and also be the chief zombie killer”: James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola

Five years ago, The Coca-Cola Company had around 400 brands. Today, it has just 200. That’s because James Quincey, CEO of the cola giant, believes if things are not working, they need to be put to bed. “I have one role as the chief agitator of the company to make our core brands stay relevant, but I am also the chief zombie killer,” said Quincey at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, during a candid, free-wheeling conversation with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, which covered topics ranging from leadership style to innovation to the controversial role of AI in advertising.

Quincey, who made a statement of sorts by walking onto the glitzy stage, dressed casually in jeans holding a Coke Zero, described how at his very first employee meeting at the cola company around ten years ago as its new CEO, he shocked everyone by what he wore and what he drank. “I wore jeans and it was not Friday,” he said. And the beverage he drank was not Coca-Cola.

“I was sending two messages out. We were formal, hierarchical and we needed to break out of that. The second thing was about the product – we had got ourselves trapped strategically in the idea of Coke first. You had got trapped in a brand strategy that did not let people choose and were trying to sell what you make rather than make what sells. So those two things had to be broken out of,” he said.

And that was the beginning of Coca-Cola’s transformation as a “total beverage company”.

Being courageous

Prodded by Narayen to give tips on leadership, Quincey said one should do something that one is really interested in because the chances of you getting out of bed in the morning and giving your best is higher then. The second thing is to have the courage to make a bold decision and go all in on it. Giving his own example, he said, every one of the jobs he had – whether in consulting or elsewhere – had a moment where there was a super big decision to be taken.

Innovation at The Coca-Cola company, said Quincey, comes in many different shapes and sizes. It can be a niche thing, putting out something to grab attention. “Putting out a Coke and Oreo flavour is not about the flavor – it brings attention to the brand,’ he said as an example.

“Innovation has multiple roles,” stressed Quincey, describing how it could be about creating a new thing permanently or doing something to the packaging or the way you market to bring people back to the franchise. “But on the core product, he said, it is really about serving unmet needs and expanding the universe…You are always looking for salience around the big ideas, The problem at Coke is we have more ideas than are going to work. And so I am also the Chief Zombie Killer.”

The challenge with AI

Quizzed by Narayen on the controversial holiday season AI-generated ad of Coca-Cola featuring polar bears, Quincey said it was cheaper to make, and quicker, resulting in huge productivity, but admitted that it had limitations as it cannot produce human-like resolution on people’s faces. “The boundary is still inanimate,” he said adding, “We still want to make ads with people in it.”

Coca-Cola had got into AI very early, pointed out Quincey. “We have always been into AI in terms of the process, the personalized communications, whether emails, voice communications or text. When the opportunity to get into Gen AI came, we had no idea how to use it, but we jumped on to the train early because that’s where the world is going. Let’s build the stuff quickly because we are big and that tends to make us slow,” he said.

Finally, asked to peep around the corner and make a prediction on Creativity in AI to transform marketing, Quincey said he foresaw a struggle between two ends of the spectrum. He said it would get easier and easier to personalise an ad, and redo it if it does not induce a customer to buy, and reshow the ad again. “You can customise it endlessly. So, the lower the cost of the ad, the more I can set up Gen AI plus some sort of intelligent engine to chase you. Until you click yes.”

At the other end of the spectrum, he said, there will be a whole lot of annoyed consumers. And they may get so mad that they would want to buy those apps that block everything!