INDRA NOOYI DAMAGES THE PEPSI BRAND?

UPDATE 8/13/06: NOOYI PROMOTED AND APPOINTED CEO OF PEPSI

UPDATE (2) 8/14/06: THE PROBLEM WITH INDRA NOOYI

UPDATE (3) 8/15/06: BUSINESS WEEK'S TAKE ON INDRA...

Many marketers are actively advocating and agitating for a new form of marketing that takes away the power and control of the enterprise and places it in the hands of employees and customers. You see these quaint notions in play when employees are allowed to criticize, denigrate and slur the reputations of the companies that pay their checks. And when the business intelligentsia swoon to the defense of employees who leak competitively sensitive information to the media, while demonizing any enterprise who attempts to protect this information.

So following this train of thought, what happens when you have a politically correct activist CEO who says something to alienate most of your customers? Not long ago Pepsico's CEO, Indra Nooyi, gave a controversial address to the graduating class at Columbia Business School. In it, she said that America was giving the finger to to the rest of world. Her speech was taken as an insult by many of the Columbia grads and many American citizens of Indian descent felt she had betrayed her adopted country. More importantly the story was picked up by conservative bloggers who turned it into a front page item that led to boycotts of Pepsi products.

CBS News published a fascinating analysis of this by Victor Davis Hanson from the National Review Online.

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