the right things,” he said. “If you really think you are doing the wrong thing and covering it up, it’s hard to deal with that emotionally. I’ve still got friends there, and I suggest to them, ‘It’s just very hard to see yourself from the inside.’ ”
“But the obesity trend is an epidemic,” Dunn continued. “And there is no question its roots are directly tied to the expansion of fast food, junk food, and soft drink consumption. Whether you can identify any one of those things is probably a fair question. Soft drink guys prospect on that all the time. But you can look at the obesity rates, and you can look at per capita consumption of sugary soft drinks and overlay those on a map, and I promise you: They correlate about .99999 percent. As they say, you can run but you can’t hide.”
J effrey Dunn can’t quite pinpoint the moment when he first knew he would work for Coca-Cola. He guesses he was seven or eight. And he probably wasn’t the only kid in his family who felt that way. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley with four older brothers. The Dunn boys played baseball. They surfed. They tangled with one another, and—this being the 1960s—they grew their hair long. Their mother had been a cartoonist at the Disney studios, but she traded that career to wrangle her boys full-time or, as Dunn likes to say, “to keep us out of jail.” In the evenings, when Jeffrey and his brothers would tumble through the door, the day’s real entertainment would begin: Their father would come home and transfix them with stories of his job.
Walter Dunn worked for Coca-Cola, but he could have passed for a U.S. senator. Tall and handsome with a big head of white hair, the elder Dunn also had the gift of speech. The five boys would sit, rapt, as he spun his latest war stories, which invariably involved the competition, Pepsi. “When other kids were coming home and talking about how school was, Walter would come home and tell stories about Pepsi making a challenge, here and there,” Dunn said. “He worked in the fountain department ofCoke’s offices in Los Angeles, and one time when 7-Eleven decided to put Pepsi into their stores alongside Coke, Walter was called in over the Christmas holiday to help stop it.”
In 1970, Walter Dunn moved his family to Atlanta, where Coke is headquartered, to take a much bigger job.He was put in charge of the prestige accounts, the company’s most valued relationships—and, at this point, the stories around the dinner table got even more colorful. It was during these years that Walter Dunn developed—invented, really—the enterprise known as sports and entertainment marketing. Under chairman Woodruff’s direction, Walter Dunn’s job was to put Coke’s logo into stadiums, movie theaters, amusement parks, fair grounds, and every other venue in the country where people had fun. He cut endorsement deals with athletes and teams and stadiums, which for Jeffrey, now a teenager, was a dream come true.“He took his job very seriously,” Dunn said. “Coke had about an 80 percent share of what you would define as prestige accounts, so every one of these that came up, Pepsi would try to take them away. Walter took this personally. He was maintaining the integrity of the Coke brand. I was always hearing about the Buffalo Bills or the Dodgers or the Yankees, and if you’re a kid growing up, all those names
meant
something to you.”
Listening to his father, Jeffrey Dunn knew that he had the work ethic needed to succeed at Coke. But it wasn’t until one day in high school that he knew he could do more than work hard—that he, too, could lead and inspire others to give themselves over to something larger. He was the captain of the basketball team, and early in one heated game his coach pulled him off the court after he committed a foul. Dunn, feeling that the coach was being too timid, picked up a chair and threw it eight rows into the stands—at which point, the coach promptly
“But the obesity trend is an epidemic,” Dunn continued. “And there is no question its roots are directly tied to the expansion of fast food, junk food, and soft drink consumption. Whether you can identify any one of those things is probably a fair question. Soft drink guys prospect on that all the time. But you can look at the obesity rates, and you can look at per capita consumption of sugary soft drinks and overlay those on a map, and I promise you: They correlate about .99999 percent. As they say, you can run but you can’t hide.”
J effrey Dunn can’t quite pinpoint the moment when he first knew he would work for Coca-Cola. He guesses he was seven or eight. And he probably wasn’t the only kid in his family who felt that way. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley with four older brothers. The Dunn boys played baseball. They surfed. They tangled with one another, and—this being the 1960s—they grew their hair long. Their mother had been a cartoonist at the Disney studios, but she traded that career to wrangle her boys full-time or, as Dunn likes to say, “to keep us out of jail.” In the evenings, when Jeffrey and his brothers would tumble through the door, the day’s real entertainment would begin: Their father would come home and transfix them with stories of his job.
Walter Dunn worked for Coca-Cola, but he could have passed for a U.S. senator. Tall and handsome with a big head of white hair, the elder Dunn also had the gift of speech. The five boys would sit, rapt, as he spun his latest war stories, which invariably involved the competition, Pepsi. “When other kids were coming home and talking about how school was, Walter would come home and tell stories about Pepsi making a challenge, here and there,” Dunn said. “He worked in the fountain department ofCoke’s offices in Los Angeles, and one time when 7-Eleven decided to put Pepsi into their stores alongside Coke, Walter was called in over the Christmas holiday to help stop it.”
In 1970, Walter Dunn moved his family to Atlanta, where Coke is headquartered, to take a much bigger job.He was put in charge of the prestige accounts, the company’s most valued relationships—and, at this point, the stories around the dinner table got even more colorful. It was during these years that Walter Dunn developed—invented, really—the enterprise known as sports and entertainment marketing. Under chairman Woodruff’s direction, Walter Dunn’s job was to put Coke’s logo into stadiums, movie theaters, amusement parks, fair grounds, and every other venue in the country where people had fun. He cut endorsement deals with athletes and teams and stadiums, which for Jeffrey, now a teenager, was a dream come true.“He took his job very seriously,” Dunn said. “Coke had about an 80 percent share of what you would define as prestige accounts, so every one of these that came up, Pepsi would try to take them away. Walter took this personally. He was maintaining the integrity of the Coke brand. I was always hearing about the Buffalo Bills or the Dodgers or the Yankees, and if you’re a kid growing up, all those names
meant
something to you.”
Listening to his father, Jeffrey Dunn knew that he had the work ethic needed to succeed at Coke. But it wasn’t until one day in high school that he knew he could do more than work hard—that he, too, could lead and inspire others to give themselves over to something larger. He was the captain of the basketball team, and early in one heated game his coach pulled him off the court after he committed a foul. Dunn, feeling that the coach was being too timid, picked up a chair and threw it eight rows into the stands—at which point, the coach promptly
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