Former Coca-Cola Chief Marketing Officer Charles B. Fruit died earlier this week. The company confirmed that Fruit, 61, suffered a heart attack on Tuesday after an early morning swim.
Fruit came to Coca-Cola in 1991 to head up the beverage maker’s sports marketing efforts as vice president of global media. He was a moving force behind Coke’s global promotions with both the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, among other campaigns, and was named Coke’s chief marketing officer in 2004 to replace Daniel Palumbo.
After a company restructuring eliminated that post in 2005, he served as a senior advisor in marketing, strategy and innovation.
Fruit came to Coca-Cola from Anheuser-Busch, where he signed an exclusive 15-year sponsorship deal with ESPN and pioneered the use of brand logos on playing surfaces such as boxing rings.
“Chuck was a champion of the Coca-Cola Co. and all of the marketers who breathed life into our brands,” the company said in a statement by chairman and outgoing CEO Neville Isdell and president and COO Muhtar Kent, who will succeed Isdell in the top job next month. “In an industry often characterized by sharp elbows and pointed tongues, he was universally regarded as kind and thoughtful, as well as the consummate gentleman and professional.”
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