ROBERT WILKINSON

Robert Wilkinson was born in Devon in 1950 and educated at the University of Cambridge, where he read Archaeology & Anthropology, then History (BA 1972; MA 1975), and was holder of the Olford Bequest scholarship. After graduating, he worked in fine arts broadcasting and as a wine importer. He published a book on wine in 1978.

He joined the wine division of The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia in 1978, where he reported directly to the president, with special responsibilities for market development, public affairs and prestige accounts. He became additionally responsible for international brand management and overseas business development.

He transferred to London in 1981 as managing director of the wine operations of The Coca-Cola Company in northern Europe. After the sale of the Company’s worldwide wine business in 1983, he joined the soft drink business of the Company as a member of the senior management team for northern Europe and director of External Affairs. He was additionally responsible for joint European marketing planning with the Company’s Columbia Pictures subsidiary. He worked closely during this period on key regulatory and institutional marketing issues across Europe. He developed a major exhibition on the history of Coca-Cola brand management and design at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (1986), which toured nine countries and still ranks as the world’s most successful exhibition of commercial design. He was appointed an industrial governor of the British Nutrition Foundation (London), chairman of the aspartame group of the International Sweeteners’ Association (Zürich), and director of the Food Information Centre (London) and of Refreshment Spectrum Limited (London).

He transferred to Atlanta in 1988 as director of International External Affairs for The Coca-Cola Company and vice president, The Coca-Cola Export Corporation, working extensively in Latin America, Asia/the Pacific, and Europe. During this time he reported operationally to the presidents of Coca-Cola International. He spent considerable time in 1989 as a member of the mergers and acquisition team responsible for the billion-dollar restructuring of the Company’s largest international bottler and was a member of the core teams responsible for the eventual return of Coca-Cola to India in 1993. He managed key projects on various elements of global strategy and was appointed a director of The Coca-Cola Foundation.

He relocated to London in 1994 as vice president, Coca-Cola International, and member of the European operating board. He was additionally appointed vice president, Coca-Cola Greater Europe. Under the patronage of the Group president, he founded long-term, research-based, cross-functional programmes to understand and address fundamental issues of institutional and brand positioning.

His present work concentrates on collaborative business development and working with senior management of international retail customers and of major manufacturers to further the performance of consumer goods industries. He is an original member of the board of ECR Europe, which was founded in Brussels in 1994 and is now the world’s most successful integrated value chain organisation, attracting some 3,000 delegates to its annual conferences. He was invited by the Board to be co-chairman for the 2001/2002/2003 conferences.

In 1999 he worked with industry to help create the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI), an advisory body of senior executives from international consumer goods companies, devoted to improving business process and supply chain standards across the world.

He founded and continues to co-chair the ECR Europe Academic Partnership, a panel of distinguished senior academics and business leaders, dedicated to analysing and influencing future structures of international business and optimum commercial practices. The Partnership’s first book, “ECR in the Third Millennium”, was published in March 2000, followed by “ECR Journal: International Commerce Review”, which is now published semi-annually with worldwide circulation. Elements of this unique work with academics – now the world’s largest collaboration between business practitioners and universities – are central to the prestigious international ECR Research Symposium series, held this year at Athens University.

He has been guest speaker on international business at universities and conferences in the United States and Europe and continues to teach several times a year at Cambridge. He was adviser on Professor Peter Nolan’s study of joint ventures in China published by the Cambridge University Centre for Business Research (1994) and the 1999 Cambridge study of the economic and business impacts of the Coca-Cola system and transnational business in Europe.

He has been marketing and communications adviser to the Russian Foreign Investment Advisory Council (chaired by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation) and vice chairman of the European Food Information Council (Brussels/Paris). He is development adviser to the Governing Body of Peterhouse, Cambridge University’s oldest college. He is founder and chairman of the Campbell-Johnson memorial trust for international public affairs and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

He lives in London and is married with one daughter.

September 2003