DiversityInc - November/December 2008

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them to address how you can work with The Coca-Cola Co. in the marketplace, in the community, and in the workplace. The business plans have been brilliant; they actually present the business plans to the president of our North American operations every year. For example, our Latino employee-resource group about a year ago was amazing when we were launching a

that product.” They went with our
sales force out into the community
to those, what I’d call, “mom-and-
pop” customers, the stores out there
that are Latino-owned, and they
helped explain the value proposi-
tion of the product, how you should
merchandise it in the store. It is now
a year and a half later and we are 30
percent above expectations in our
energy category, and all the stores
bought more
of the other
Coke products
as well. We got
a lift in all of
our business,
and it’s a classic
example of how
the resource
groups help.

“Our Latino group put us 39% above
expectations.” Steve Bucherati, Coca-Cola

product that was targeted to Latino consumers. It was an energy drink, and energy drinks over-index by 2 to 1 versus the Latino population, so 14 percent of the U.S. population, and 27 percent of the consumers of energy drinks, are Latino. So, we created this energy drink, flavoring and everything, targeting the Latino population, and our Latino resource group knew that we were doing that, so they went to our marketing people and said, “Let us help you position

Crumpton: Building

relationships around the world, we rely on our network groups. For example, we bring in customers in Asia. Our network group has been successful in making people feel valued coming into the St. Louis area. When they leave and go back to China and other parts of Asia, they always talk about how those Asian network groups played a role in making them feel very welcomed. It’s been a success for us not only closing the deal but also helping us in closing future major deals.

Glover: About two years ago, our Asian executives came to us and said, “How can we help IBM be more successful, to be more prepared to do business with Asian clients and customers around the globe?” We said “Go off and think about what you think your community can do with this space.” They came back with the idea that they should do an Asian leadership summit, with the issues of developing leaders in the U.S., Europe and Asia. They set up a forum for C-level executives in partnership with the Asian Society, the Japan Society and the Committee of 100. They ran a two-day session in New York City at the Asian Society Building, [which was] sold out, standing room only. They invited C-level executives from China, Japan and India, because they used their personal networks to go out and engage these folks. We had C-level executives from European and U.S.-based companies, and it went well. They shared all the benchmarking, they had done surveys with these companies. At the end, we got up and said, “We hope you all have found value with this, and we’ll send a report out to you all,” and the customers said, “You’re going to do this again, right?” So we’re getting ready to run the second version of it in the fall in New York City.