Coca-Cola aims to be ‘a little bit better everywhere’ to drive meaningful growth

Coca-Cola’s incoming CEO has emphasised the importance of “being a little bit better and sharper everywhere” to drive meaningful growth across the business.

Henrique Braun will take over the top job at The Coca-Cola Company in March, having been promoted from chief operating officer. Today (10 February), he spoke to investors for the first time since the announcement of his appointment during the company’s full-year results.

Braun said the business, which owns brands including Smart Water, Fanta and Powerade, as well as trademark Coca-Cola, is both aiming to increase the number of “billion-dollar brands” it owns and turn those already into that category into “multi-billion-dollar brands”. That will be achieved through small improvements across the business, he said.

“We must remain discontented every day,” Braun said. “Our system needs to focus on being a little bit better and sharper everywhere to drive transformational impact.”

The incoming CEO highlighted several areas of potential for the business going forward, the first of which was recruiting consumers into its brands.

“We will aim to step change recruitment, especially with young adult consumers by better integrating our marketing campaigns with commercial execution at the point of sale,” he said.

The business cited trademark Coca-Cola’s ‘Rings of Magic’ platform as an example. It ran across 1,500 universities in eight key markets globally, aimed at strengthening the brand’s connection to students with local ‘Study Break’ activations.

Coca-Cola expands CMO role amid leadership reshuffle

Coca-Cola recently expanded its top marketer’s remit, with customer and commercial leadership responsibilities moving from chief financial officer John Murphy to current executive vice-president and CMO, Manolo Arroyo. This tracks with its ambition to integrate marketing with commercial execution across its system.

While The Coca-Cola Company is very much a global business, locality was a theme of the CEO-elect’s messaging about the future of the company. Whether that be in advertising and promotional campaigns, or through its innovation.

“Our innovation today is not where it needs to be,” Braun asserted, despite saying the company had made improvements in this area.

The company’s innovation agenda needs to be more connected to consumer insight, and quicker to market, he said.

“The consumer is looking for more innovation at the local level as well,” he said. “That’s where we believe that we can make a big difference. When I say we want to be closer to the consumer, it is to understand them from a local point of view, and not miss that opportunity to start in a local market, something that can turn into a billion-dollar brand later.”

The business can use its capabilities to help scale the brand later, but Braun is particularly keen that Coca-Cola should be picking up on those insights to create more localised innovation in the first place.

Volume focus

As might be expected from the emphasis the incoming CEO placed on recruitment, driving volume growth is a “key priority” for Coca-Cola, as its chief financial officer James Murphy told investors today.

While the business did grow unit case volume by 1% in its final quarter of 2025, volumes were flat across the year. Net revenues grew by 2% in the whole year and also in quarter four, with pricing actions helping drive that growth, particularly across the year. Sales reached $47.9bn (£35.1bn) in the year.

While volumes were flat for the business across the year, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar grew 14% globally across the year.

The company emphasised it was looking to drive volume growth across markets and across brands. Investment behind its brands remains a cornerstone of that. Commenting on a pattern of margin expansion (a measure indicating an increase in the rate of profit for a company), Murphy said this was “not a fluke”, pointing to key levels including marketing investment, supply chain and the ways in which the business works as enablers of this.

Speaking separately on the call, he talked about the “growth equation” the business has.

“The root of that equation is a focus for us to win in each of our markets over time, and for that to happen, we have got to be able to invest in a consistent manner,” Murphy said.

That consistent investment across different levers allows the business to both withstand headwinds in local environments and in the competitive environment, he said.