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PepsiCo, Inc.


Self Description

July 2002: "PepsiCo is a world leader in convenient foods and beverages, with revenues of about $27 billion and over 143,000 employees. The company consists of the snack businesses of Frito-Lay North America and Frito-Lay International; the beverage businesses of Pepsi-Cola North America, Gatorade/Tropicana North America and PepsiCo Beverages International; and Quaker Foods North America, manufacturer and marketer of ready-to-eat cereals and other food products. PepsiCo brands are available in nearly 200 countries and territories." http://www.pepsico.com/ [frames]

Third-Party Descriptions

June 2011: 'Case in point: PepsiCo. Its investors are unhappy that the company is pushing its "healthier-for-you" foods instead of doing what it is supposed to: pushing the far more profitable "fun-for-you" products like Pepsi-Cola, Gatorade, and Cheetos.'

http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/06/why-wall-st-hates-healthy-foods-an-unhealthy-business-model/241278/

February 2008: "As mobile technology improves, companies will see their intellectual property used in imaginative new ways on the third screen, too, whether they like it or not. The wake-up call to this problem was the ringtone, but the music business quickly turned that into a healthy, legitimate revenue stream. Licensing music that is DRM-free and gratis at the point of consumption could prove to be that industry's most lucrative move in a decade. Pepsi is paying the record labels so they can give away music in a bid to sell soda."

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/community/columns/other-columns/e3ic1abd1883d215637d936eefaaf129e1a

January 2008: "Pepsi could take flak for building its Super Bowl ad around Justin Timberlake, the guy who yanked off a portion of singer Janet Jackson's bra during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. The spot doesn't allude to that incident. It shows Timberlake escaping a series of disasters caused by a pretty girl sitting poolside sipping her Pepsi."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2008-01-28-super-bowl-ad-watchdogs_N.htm

August 2007: Last year, someone at PepsiCo deleted several paragraphs of the Pepsi entry that focused on its detrimental health effects. In 2005, someone using a computer at Diebold deleted paragraphs that criticized the company’s electronic voting machines. That same year, someone inside Wal-Mart Stores changed an entry about employee compensation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/technology/19wikipedia.html

May 2007: ATLANTA, Ga., May 30 — Under pressure from animal rights activists, two soft drink giants, Coca-Cola and Pepsico, have agreed to stop directly financing research that uses animals to test or develop their products, except where such testing is required by law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/business/31testing-web.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Organization Executive (past or present) William R. Floyd Person
Director/Trustee/Overseer (past or present) Ray Lee Hunt Person Sep 28, 2007
Organization Executive (past or present) Matthew M. McKenna Person Apr 22, 2010
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Mrs. Indra K. Nooyi Person Jul 5, 2011
Organization Executive (past or present) John S. Riccitiello Person Jun 28, 2011
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Organization Executive (past or present) Director/Trustee/Overseer (past or present) Michael White Person Jul 6, 2011

Articles and Resources

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Jun 30, 2011 Wall St. and Food: An Unhealthy Business Model: PepsiCo's CEO is under fire for pushing healthier products—and the drama says a lot about how the industry works

QUOTE: Hailed as a strategic visionary since taking PepsiCo's reins nearly five years ago, Mrs. Nooyi is facing doubts from investors and industry insiders concerned that her push into healthier brands has distracted the company from some core products....Products that PepsiCo calls "good for you" still make up only about 20% of revenue. The bulk still comes from drinks and snacks the company dubs "fun for you," including Lay's potato chips, Doritos corn chips and Pepsi-Cola...

 Atlantic Online, The (Atlantic Monthly)
Apr 29, 2011 Soft Drink Industry Fights Proposed Food Stamp Ban

QUOTE: They also fear that restrictions on soft drinks would set a precedent for the government to distinguish between good and bad foods and to ban the use of food stamps for other products… The plan is unfair to food stamp recipients because it treats them differently from other customers.

 New York Times
Apr 11, 2011 A Scorecard for Companies With a Conscience

QUOTE: The typical pattern for a new, successful, triple-bottom-line company is that it quickly gets gobbled up by a major corporation — usually the leader in its field… The clash of corporate culture can be overwhelming, and the worry is that gradually the mission will erode — at least the parts of it less visible to consumers — in favor of a focus purely on profit.

 New York Times
Sep 04, 2009 For Your Health, Froot Loops

QUOTE: He [nutritionist Walter C. Willett] said the criteria used by the Smart Choices Program were seriously flawed, allowing less healthy products, like sweet cereals and heavily salted packaged meals, to win its seal of approval.

 New York Times
Feb 25, 2008 Pirates of the Third Screen: Why treating customer marketers like thieves could turn them into an angry mob

QUOTE: Last month's online scrap between Scrabble trademark owners Hasbro and Mattel, and the makers of Scrabulous, an unauthorized online version of Scrabble, has some implications for the future of mobile marketing. As far as Hasbro and Mattel were concerned, Scrabulous was a simple case of piracy. But what they saw as a threat should have been a triple-word score. Someone else had created a digital version of Scrabble, and amassed 2.3 million people who played it every day. It was an amazing user-generated ad campaign. All Hasbro and Mattel had to do was swoop in with their checkbooks and make it legit. Instead, they fired their self-proclaimed agency, an army of passionate Scrabble fans.

 AdWeek
Jan 29, 2008 Advocacy groups keep advertisers on their toes

QUOTE: As if airing a superexpensive Super Bowl spot isn't fraught with enough risks, marketers face a new hazard that gained momentum last year: having a message attacked — or even hijacked — by an advocacy group.

 USA TODAY
Aug 18, 2007 Lifting Corporate Fingerprints From the Editing of Wikipedia

QUOTE: Since Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks.

 New York Times
May 31, 2007 Pepsi and Coke Agree to Stop Financing Research That Uses Animals

QUOTE: The two soft-drink giants are the latest companies to respond to scrutiny by PETA, which has mounted a campaign to expose animal testing practices in the beverage industry, an industry which unlike cosmetics or pharmaceuticals, had largely been a stealth operator in the animal testing arena.

 New York Times
Aug 29, 2006 Indian State to Bypass Microsoft ‘Monopoly’

QUOTE: In a new attack on multinational corporations, the Communist government in India’s southern state of Kerala is campaigning to eliminate Microsoft from use in public institutions, just weeks after it imposed a ban on Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

 New York Times
Aug 23, 2006 Market Place: For 2 Giants of Soft Drinks, a Crisis in a Crucial Market

QUOTE: The Center for Science and the Environment announced in August that drinks manufactured by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in India contained on average more than 24 times the safe limits of pesticides...did not respond swiftly to quell the anxieties of their customers...Partial bans on their products remain

 New York Times
May 03, 2006 Restraint Urged In Junk-Food Ads Aimed at Kids

QUOTE: In a jointly released report on food marketing and obesity, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Trade Commission said the industries should voluntarily set minimum nutrition standards for foods that can be marketed to children.

 Washington Post
Aug 27, 2005 Big Soda's Publicity Stunt

QUOTE: What possible purpose could an ad campaign serve, other than to promote soda companies as caring, responsible corporate citizens? If this sounds eerily familiar, it should. The ABA is taking a page right out of the tobacco industry's playbook: Spending more money to market its new responsible image than on actually being responsible.

 Common Dreams
Aug 29, 2004 Is the Food Industry the Problem or the Solution?

QUOTE: A new obsession of America's food, beverage and restaurant companies is thwarting childhood obesity.

 New York Times
Apr 06, 2003 Product Protesters Face Tough Going: Confusion Over Corporate Identities

QUOTE: With passions inflamed, and customers holding widely disparate opinions, multinationals are downplaying disagreeable associations in the markets they serve while emphasizing the depth of their local roots.

 Washington Post
Feb 01, 2003 BRANDED: Corporations and our schools

QUOTE: Are corporations, with priorities of profit and shareholder return, proper partners for public education?

 Reclaimdemocracy.org
Oct 11, 2000 The Party On the Left

QUOTE: The question is whether AOL's hard dealing against Disney would, or could, threaten the free market if it combined with Time Warner. The obvious answer is "Of course not," but there is something to fear in these machinations. That something is the specter of oligopoly.

 Clickz.com