In February 2003, the BBC News website reported that during a protest rally at Hyde Park in London bottles of a new cola brand Mecca Cola were distributed free of cost to the protesters. The rally was held to protest against US President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq (which he eventually did in March, 2003).

Mecca Cola was launched in November 2002 by a Tunisian businessman settled in France. Talking to journalists shortly after the launch of his brand, the businessman, Tawfik Mathlouthi, said with Mecca Cola he planned to tackle ‘American-Zionist’ economic hegemony in a non-militant manner.

The years between 2001 and 2004 witnessed a surge in anti-Americanism in most Arab countries, especially after the US ally Saudi Arabia decided to boycott American brands in 2002. The reason given was Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. But the boycott had largely to do with the hostile anti-Saudi rhetoric emerging in the US media after it was found out that 15 out of the 19 terrorists who had led 2001’s tragic 9/11 attacks in the US were Saudi nationals.

The success and failure of ‘Muslim colas’ is tied to politics and anti-Americanism

The boycott against US brands quickly spread to other Arab countries. According to P. Aggarwal, K. Knudsen and A. Maamoun in Brands as Ideological Symbols (University of Minnesota) one of the hardest hit causalities of the boycott was Coca Cola. Mecca Cola was not only jumping into the space that had opened up by the rising anti-Americanism in the Muslim world and the Arab boycott, it was also emulating the success of the original ‘Muslim cola’, called Zamzam Cola.

Ironically Zamzam Cola was once a subsidiary brand of Pepsi Cola in Iran. However, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in that country, Zamzam Cola became an independent entity. It then re-launched itself as an ‘Islamic cola’. It soon gained a major share in Iran’s soft drink market. According to Brands as Ideological Symbols, by late 2002, Zamzam had effectively cornered the two major US cola brands, Pepsi and Coke, in Arab countries. So much so that Saudi authorities named Zamzam Cola 2002’s ‘official soft drink of Hajj!’ Ten million bottles of this cola were imported from Iran to various Gulf countries.

Encouraged by the success of Zamzam and Mecca colas, a British-Pakistani couple in the UK launched Qibla Cola in 2003. This drink not only aimed to challenge the hegemony of giant American cola brands, it also promised to donate 10 percent of its proceeds to Muslim charities. This move was soon adopted by Mecca Cola as well.

The same year, Salsabeen Cola was launched in Pakistan. It was advertised through pamphlets which were distributed outside mosques in Lahore and Karachi during Friday prayers. It asked the faithful to boycott Coke and Pepsi and drink Salsabeen. However, this cola vanished the very next year.

Mecca Cola used the slogan, ‘Shake Your Conscience’ and Qibla asked the drinker to ‘Liberate your Taste.’ By 2004 all three colas — Zamzam, Mecca and Qibla — had begun to gain a significant share in the soft drink markets of the Gulf states. They then began to branch out in non-Arab Muslim countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan. Mecca Cola was launched in Pakistan in 2005.

All these cola brands did not have the marketing and distribution networks that multinational brands have. A spike in their sales was almost entirely dependent on the spike in anti-Americanism.

However, when relations between Saudi Arabia and US improved in 2004, the Saudi Supreme Court banned the sale of Zamzam Cola in the kingdom. It ruled that the soft drink could not use Islamic imagery and name for its brand. Then in 2005 Qibla Cola went belly-up and filed for bankruptcy. Sales of Mecca Cola too began to fizzle out especially when the UAE government banned it for ‘misusing’ Islamic symbolism and name of a sacred Muslim site. Only the Zamzam Cola was left standing.

All these cola brands did not have the marketing and distribution networks that multinational brands have. A spike in their sales was almost entirely dependent on the spike in anti-Americanism. Once this began to recede, so did the sales of these colas. Also, these brands completely alienated non-Muslim consumers and those Muslims whose enthusiasm for anti-Americanism got exhausted. So much so that Zamzam had to come up with a completely ‘secular’ campaign aimed at the youth to stay afloat and Mecca Cola was relaunched in 2012 with a more subtle message of ‘Be Different.’

Though all these brands capitalised on the backlash against American brands in the early 2000s, the nature of this backlash began to change shape from the late 2000s onward. Many Muslims began being equally repulsed by the violence unleashed by ‘Islamic’ militants. At times the ‘religious imagery’ of these brands began to be seen as endorsing ‘Islamic radicalism’.

Thus, from 2009 onwards, many stores in Europe stopped stocking these colas and their ‘Islamic appeal’ in most Muslim countries began to erode. In response to the challenge posed by these colas, Coke and Pepsi began to invest heavily in ‘Third World’ Muslim countries and explained this investment as an investment in the economic welfare of these countries.

For example, the October 9, 2015 issue of Dawn reported that Coke planned to invest 350 million dollars in Pakistan. The December 1, 2016 issue of Fortune magazine stated that Coke had invested 20 million dollars in the embattled Gaza strip.

On the other hand, a major Muslim charity claimed that it had not received the promised 10 percent proceeds from Qibla Cola. This greatly damaged the credibility of these colas. Marketing experts have concluded that the overt ideological makeup of these brands helped them make a brief mark during an upsurge in anti-Americanism. But they became nothing more than niche novelty brands which could not keep up with changing marketing and political trends.

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 17th, 2017