Reaching out

Birmingham-based Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED — the second largest privately held Coca-Cola bottler in North America — recently named Pamela Cook its director of multicultural marketing and community affairs for the company’s Central Region.

And Cook, a Coca-Cola employee since 2014 who describes herself as “beyond excited” by the position, offers a succinct description of her new role.

“In simple terms, what I do is find opportunities to communicate the Coca-Cola brand to ethnic communities, including African-American, Hispanic and the list goes on and on,” she said.

Cook told Iron City Ink why Coca-Cola UNITED, which has about 10,000 associates at 60 facilities in six Southeastern states, makes such an effort to reach out to different cultural groups.

“It’s the right thing to do and because Coca-Cola has been so ingrained in this community for over 100 years, you want to talk to the customers who look like the employees who work with you every day,” Cook said.

Those Coca-Cola associates, like the customers the company seeks to reach, come from “a multitude of ethnicities,” she said.

A Huntsville native who has lived in the Magic City for about 20 years, Cook will be in charge of this outreach in Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, the Tennessee Valley and parts of Georgia. Formerly a media and promotions manager with Coca-Cola UNITED, Cook has 20 years of experience in public relations and media, including radio and television. 

One way the company reaches out to different communities is through sponsoring a wide variety of events, according to Cook.

For example, Coca-Cola is the presenting sponsor for the annual Magic City Classic football game at Legion Field between Alabama A&M University and Alabama State University. The company is also heavily involved in Fiesta, the annual Hispanic festival at Linn Park; the Funk Fest music event coming to the city in 2019; and the United Negro College Fund Gala taking place in Birmingham in March.

“I can’t invite you to purchase our product if I am not involved in what’s important to you,” Cook said.

Cook will also work to strengthen the company’s relationships with historically black colleges and universities. There are 16 HBCUs in the Coca-Cola United footprint and five, including Miles College, in Cook’s region.

And many of the company’s employees or their children have attended HBCUs, according to Cook. That includes Cook, who attended Alabama A&M and later earned a degree in organizational management from Talladega College in 2014.

“I know the positive impact that HBCUs can have on your life,” Cook said. “If you start at an HBCU, you can go anywhere in the world. Look at me. I am just a little girl from Huntsville. Now I have a great job.”

The company’s support for education includes college scholarships awarded each year to eligible children and grandchildren of employees. And Cook said the company takes applications in January and February from students at HBCUs for its annual Pay It Forward summer internship program.

Coca-Cola UNITED hosted 25 students from 14 HBCUs for one-week paid internships in Birmingham and four other offices in summer 2018, according to a news release. The students learn about all aspects of the company, including production, sales, marketing and community relations.

“I’m excited because you can provide a college student with an opportunity for some real-life experience,” Cook said.

Cook is also involved in the community through her service on boards with the United Negro College Fund, Workshops Inc. and LifeSkillz Foundation. In January, Cook began serving on the board of YWCA of Central Alabama, which she said has a lot of great programs for women and children in need.

“I’ve been afforded opportunity in life others may not experience,” Cook said. “I want to give it back. I want to serve. It has nothing to do with work. I want to be a blessing to someone.”

Cook has been inspired in part by her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, which “is big on community engagement,” she said, as well as the predecessor in her position, Walter Body, with whom she worked on numerous events.

Recently retired, Body begin working on a Coca-Cola delivery truck as a teenager in the 1970s and rose through the company ranks. A graduate of Miles College, Body worked hard to help the company reach diverse consumers and make a positive impact in the community.

He did “an excellent job knowing people in the community and knowing the brand,” Cook said. “I look forward to continuing his legacy and seeing what can we do to take it to the next level.”

Perhaps most of all, Cook is inspired by the dreams and sacrifices of earlier generations of African-Americans.

“When you attend an HBCU and graduate and go on to make positive changes in the world with company or as an entrepreneur, you really are your ancestors’ wildest dream come true,” she said.

This history helps to spur Cook — who refers to herself as “the child of parents who grew up in segregated Selma, Alabama” — to greater achievement.

“I owe it to my parents to do well,” she said. “I am their legacy.”

Over her two decades in business, Cook said she’s seen big companies like Coca-Cola become more aware of the need to reach out to different cultural groups.

“That’s because the world is changing,” she said, referring to the increasing diversity in many communities.“It’s putting a lot of companies in a position to look at what we’re doing and how to be engaged.”

In 20 years, the United States may be “majority multicultural,” Cook said. “It’s a bigger reality than you think.”