Our beloved little king

When did we first meet?  I don’t think it was as soon as I joined McCann-Erickson Philippines and became part of the Coca-Cola account group.  We met later than that.  I don’t remember exactly when we met but that doesn’t matter at all.  All I know is that I loved him from the start.  He was a sweet small man.  He thought so quickly his words could not catch up with him.  He was always brimming with laughter.  His name was Jesus Celdran but everybody called him King-king, his nickname, that later got shortened to King.

He was one of my many clients.  Then Coca-Cola was our biggest client.  It wasn’t the industry leader.  It had only 30 percent of the cola market.   Sixty percent was Pepsi’s, and the remaining 10 percent belonged to Sarsi, RC, and brands.  But we came together really when they – Coca-Cola Export Company, the makers of Coke concentrate and San Miguel Corporation, the bottlers – decided to spin off their partnership into Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines, Inc. (CCBPI) and market Coca-Cola, Sprite, Royal Tru-Orange and many other brands we would eventually launch.  In the ‘80s they decided to turn the market around.

Neville Isdell, 6’5” tall, a redhead, another wonderful man, came and became president of CCBPI.  His executive vice president was King-king, who was 5’2”, approximately.  They were quite a pair.

To turn the market around we launched new package sizes.  We created a war scenario, put all the Coke executives in army uniforms.  Neville was five-star, King was four-star, down the line.  We ordered the uniforms sewn for them.  When the Coke executives began to ask where they could buy the pins and medals and other trims for their uniforms, I knew we had hit the spot.  They all loved the war theme.  Then the creative director was Tessie Tomas.  She had not yet launched her career as a comedienne. 

I remember we would rent a coaster, board it early in the morning wearing shorts and T-shirts and bringing a pillow each, not because we were going to sleep, but to protect our heads from falling posters, lights, other paraphernalia that would fall on us when the coaster braked.  We traveled to all our plants then.  There were 18 from the north to Zamboanga.  Each plant would set up with camouflage, nets, sandbags to make it look like a war zone.  We used slide projectors, the only projectors then.

By the time we got to Zamboanga there was a tank and army trucks as part of our ceremonies.  They borrowed it from the government.  By that time too we had turned the market around.  It became 60 percent Coca-Cola, 30 percent Pepsi-Cola and 10 percent all the rest.  Those were fun days.  We always traveled together, got onstage with all the executives.  We were a family.  That’s how we built our spirit that to this day has not died.

In the ‘90s, when I returned from the States, I went to work for CCBPI as corporate communications director and chairman & president of Coca-Cola Foundation Philippines Inc. (CCFPI), the company’s non-profit entity.  That’s when King and I became really close friends.  We traveled a lot together.  I remember we were on our way back from Davao when Pinatubo erupted.  We couldn’t land in Manila.  Instead we landed in Cebu and didn’t know how long we would be stranded there.  After two days King got bored and decided to take a boat back.  We shared a bunk room, four of us, two guys and two girls.  I remember taking the upper bunk and enjoying the ride back home so much that a few years later I took my family on another boat ride home from Cebu.

Then we all aged together.  We retired.  We got old.  King still loved to read.  He set up a book club with friends and relatives and named me president.  We met a few times.  One event sticks to my memory.   His wife, Tita, asked him to buy something for their house from a hardware store.  He told his driver to go down and find out how much it was.  It was P2,900 something so he needed P3,000.  He poked in his shirt pocket and brought out P500.  He dug into another pocket and brought out another P700.  “King,” I said, “I have that amount.  Why don’t I lend it to you and you can pay me at the next meeting?”  He gave me a signal that meant no then he continued to pick all his pockets.  He had more than P3,000 squirreled away.  The money was folded into small pieces.    That had me giggling.

Last Friday morning, when I woke up, I got the notice telling me he had passed away.  He was 89 years old, beloved by everyone who worked with him.  He was like a father to all of us.  He was, after all, our beloved little King.

* * *

Please text your comments to 0917-8155570.