Following today’s announcement of a new physical activity drive in collaboration with Coca Cola, ukactive CEO David Stalker has outlined what drove the health and wellbeing advocate to team up with the world’s largest producer of fizzy drinks.

The Coca Cola Zero ParkLives initiative will start at the end of May – designed to offer free activities that promote physical activity – across 70 parks in Newcastle, Birmingham and Newham, London, with plans to expand it to more cities nationwide between now and 2020. Activities on offer will range from hula-hooping to table tennis and tai chi to zumba.

Coca Cola Great Britain has pledged to invest £20m in physical activity programmes over the next six years, as it bids “to help get one million people active by 2020.” ukactive will lead the monitoring and evaluation of the project, with the newly-appointed chair of the organisation’s research board, Professor Greg Whyte, also serving as chair of the Coca Cola Zero ParkLives Evaluation Committee.

Coca Cola has shown a growing interest in the physical activity sector in recent years – amid growing criticism of the role its products play in the UK’s obesity crisis – and the CSR Manager of Coca Cola GB recently gave a speech at the ukactive Summit in November 2013.

The new initiative has been met with a mixed response from the health and wellbeing community, with some sections welcoming the investment, while Dr Aseem Malhotra, cardiologist and science director for campaign group Action on Sugar branded the project “a really disingenuous stunt.”

Explaining the decision to work alongside Coca Cola GB on this initiative, Stalker said in a blog post on ukactive’s website that it was natural to question the tie up at face value. But, he said, the opportunity to help deliver a free nationwide physical activity initiative was in line with ukactive’s mission statement to get “more people, more active, more often,” adding that achieving this “requires partnerships with brands that have the profile to reach consumers at scale.”

He also acknowledged that it was vital for ukactive’s commercial partnerships to avoid being “reduced to a starry-eyed dalliance to connect with deeper pockets and dance on bigger platforms,” stating that the considerations for who ukactive works with “varies from project to project – as it should.”

“What matters is a genuine and credible long term commitment to getting more people more physically active and demonstrable recognition of the fact that investing in physical activity cannot be a guard against criticism for lack of commitment on tackling nutritional content,” Stalker added.

To read an interview with David Stalker in the latest edition of Sports Management magazine, click here.

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