Public Relations

Moss Kendrix

This person’s name is Moss Kendrix. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1917ause he is a public relations pioneer. As you can see he is a black man, and exactly because of this he designed countless public relations campaigns, which were aimed at the African- American population in the United States. He worked for news organizations and corporate clients like Ford Motor Company, Carnation, and Coca-Cola. He explained his corporate clients the importance of the buying power of African- Americans.

As I already mentioned one of the companies for which Moss Kendrix made a PR campaign was Coca-Cola. Nowadays, Coca-Cola appears to be the absolute beverage. But it hasn’t been always like that, especially for African-Americans throughout the south during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Black people had another favorite drink and that was Nehi’s orange and grape flavoured drinks. The popularity of Nehi’s drinks was due to their recognition of the minority market, something that Coca-Cola thought as not important at all. But Moss Kendrix realized the mistake that The Coca-Cola company made and went to its offices in Atlanta, Georgia, where he made his proposal on how to influence the African-American society. This happened in the 1950’s, Moss worked for Coca-Cola company till the early 1970’s.

The Coca-Cola Proposal.

The Proposal that Moss Kendrix made was revolutionary, because it aimed the African-American population, something that hasn’t been done before. The Negro market in the United States consisted of fourteen million people. They represented a really important consumer market, which could be

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Vasilena Tsanova

reached psychologically and indirectly with the help of well-organized public relations campaign. Of course this included advertisement as well, but I’m going to talk about the PR approach, which covered three objects.

1 - A Jackie Robinson Bat Boy and Girl Good Citizenship Corps.

2 - A "Who Are America's Twelve Leading Negro Citizens" Contest, and

3 A Coca-Cola Scholarship Contest for High School Seniors.

Jackie Robinson, who took part in the mentioned “Jackie Robinson Coke Club and Good Citizen Corps” was one of the most popular black baseball players at the current moment. He was Brooklyn’s Dodgers first baseman and the first Negro to enter modern organized baseball. So in a way he was a role- model for the Negro Youths, the generation towards which most of the campaign was aimed. Although the purpose of the plan was to indirectly reach the entire Negro population. After all Jackie Robinson was listed 2nd after Bill Crosby and Frank Sinatra as one of the most popular personalities in the nation. He even starred in a movie, entitled “Courage” , which was treating juvenile delinquency. As you can see, he really fitted for the project Moss Kendrix proposed.

First, Coca-Cola sponsored Jackie Robinson