I have friends who are brand managers at Coke. There's absolutely no way this came from them. They're neither organizationally smart enough nor culturally astute enough to pull this off. Everything at KO is looked at through the lens of "how does this affect the Coca-Cola brand?"
:D That's how I read it first, but the second and third sentences likely refer to Coke as an organization, not his friends at Coke. (Or, at least that's how I would spin it if I'm wrong.)
