Nevertheless, it features the stylistic imprint of the core brand.

"The signals clearly say that many of you are not adequately supporting your core brands," he said.

"We are not backing away from our core brand in any way," she said.

He will need those skills to re-energize Coke, which has seen slow growth in its core brand.

Growth will also come from continuing to build on the core brands.

The problem is that many of these share factories with the bigger core brands.

We wanted that to be our core brand.

"Historically, companies wanted to maintain the integrity of their core brands," he added.

"The core brands are holding up very very well," she said in the conference call.

However, by the late 1990s, UB was restructuring its business to focus on core brands.