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Coca-Cola is a brand “ever enshrouded in an aura of goodness and happiness,” writes Murray Carpenter in his just-released “Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Misinformation and Makes Us Sick” book published by The MIT Press.
He credits public relations campaigns that are so effective that “many Americans still have not gotten the memo about the health risks posed by sodas.”
Carpenter notes that some scientists say sugar-sweetened beverages contribute to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
“Put another way, one of the greatest threats to public health in the US, and around the world, is the consumption of Coca-Cola and other sugar-sweetened beverages,” he writes.
Sweet and Deadly covers how Coke has avoided its day of reckoning—unlike tobacco and opioid companies—via a sophisticated shadow network that has “masterfully spread disinformation for decades to hide the health risks from its consumers.”
The book is a must-read for PR people and students of disinformation.
Time correspondent Simon Shuster’s “The Showman” demonstrates how Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky’s masterful knowledge of PR tactics and the power of propaganda transformed him from comedian into a respected world leader.
Iuliia Mendel, who served as press secretary for Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 to 2021, will release a book called “The Fight Of Our Lives” in September, published by Simon & Schuster’s One Signal Publishers.
Robert Dilenschneider, former CEO of Hill and Knowlton, is releasing the fifth edition of The Public Relations Handbook on Feb. 15. 
Big Advertising may be down for the count, but the power of marketing lives on. That’s the big takeaway from Paul Dyer’s “Friction Fatigue,” a look at what advertising’s downward spiral means for “future-focused brands."
Sabrina Horn, the high-tech PR guru who sold her Horn Group to Finn Partners in 2015, has published “Make It, Don’t Fake It.”
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